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Linux Market: Absolutes / Percentages / Trends
vincecate writes "In their 10-K filing, Microsoft says that
Linux server units
rose slightly faster on an absolute basis
than Windows server units in fiscal 2004.
To project the trends it is helpful to
look at the percentages.
Some
Gartner Inc. statistics
report Linux server unit shipments are up 61% giving it 9.5% of the overall market share.
Windows has a much larger base, so it can get
the same absolute unit growth with a much
lower percentage.
Gartner expects Linux to continue growing faster and have
more than 1/2 of the new server shipment market
by the end of 2008."
All that money that SCO will be making!
When is the percent of Linux servers going to reach that of the Windows machines?
- Frist psot!
BEAVIS Dammit, this always happens! I think I'm gonna score and then I never score! It's not fair! We've traveled a hundred miles 'cause we thought we were gonna score, but now it's not gonna happen!
BUS DRIVER (yelling from his seat) Hey buddy, sit down! Now!
BEAVIS SHUT UP! (continuing) I'm sick and tired of this! We're never gonna score! It's just not gonna happen! We're just gonna get old like these people, but they've probably scored!
BUS DRIVER (standing) Hey! I'm warning you! Sit down!
BEAVIS It's like this chick's a slut (motioning to Martha)... and look at this guy!... He's old but he's probably scored a million times!
OLD GUY (nods in agreement) Ohh yeah.
BEAVIS But not us! We're never gonna score! WE'RE NEVER GONNA SCORE!!! AAGGHHHH!!!
(Even if he is a subscriber, that's an impressive typing speed with very few errors.)
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
For all the talk of Linux, only 230,074 machines, or about 14.7 percent of shipments, were servers
running Linux. However, all of those Linux machines added up to a smidgen more than $1 billion
in sales for the quarter.Check more details here
fifteen jugglers, five believers
i'm not really sure how important linux server shipment numbers are. Many copies will be installed on multiple machines or just downloaded for free.
however it does show continual growth as a general indicater that linux is well accepted in the industry. i know my recent workplace was mostly windows on the desktop but had quite a few linux servers.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
I appreciate you sharing your problems with us and all, but your entire post is entirely offtopic. Having read it though ... I must say that you know next to nothing about the organisation of OSS projects. It's not all about geeks with pimples playing slaves for IBM ... theres' more ... i'll leave you to discover it for yourself though ...
Never underestimate the power of idiots in large groups
Apparently 2 minutes after the story was posted...so 452.5 wpm... :)
Sod programming, this guy should work at a call centre.
Lifted directly off www.linuxsucks.org. Troll.
I guess we see this rise mostly from the various Unix brands getting thrown out of companies. My own employer is replacing Solaris (50 big servers, 250 workstations) with Linux wherever possible. A RedHat server license might be damned expensive when compared to a Microsoft server (and yes, I do mean bulk pricing for "enterprises"), but it's quite cheap if you compare it to a Solaris machine.
http://www.linuxsucks.org/read.html?postid=8345&re plies=39&page=1
Some of us aren't shady recluses with no other goals in life other than to understand every little thing about computers.
No, some of us are paid shills and astroturfers, aren't we.
Boy, you are just trapped inbetween college and corporate ...
On one hand you bash the corporate linuxes, and in the same breath you judge the 'GNU assholes'
oh and, try working in a corporate environment.
And read up on the Software lifecycle, development is just a fraction of the cost. $400 for RedHat buys you a whole lot more than just the free software.
But then again, why should you, you're an excellent software engineer.
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
This has got to be a troll, but some points are just plain stupid..
/me wipes a tear from his eye...
"have a root password since it was a single user machine" - This is totally normal, every version of Windows since NT has had this. Your probably confused because most peoples home Windows machine logs in with the administrator account. Most linux distro's can log straight into your user account from boot now too, IIRC RedHat 8 allowed this.
"X Windows loaded up and I was in Linux" - This statement just proves you know nothing about Linux or UNIX in general.
"CD ROM icon...where was it? Apparently I had to mount it manually" - IIRC RedHat 8 came by default with amd running, so I am starting to think you never actually intalled RedHat 8.
"it wants the stupid root password again" - BTW you better get used to this, Windows 2003 and above tries to enforce good administrator procedures by getting users to log into their own account, then "Run as..." administrator.
I am amazed that someone who has "studied the Linux kernel in depth" actually gave up on installing a distro because the automatic detection of the sound card didn't work.
"even though its autoupdate some how corrupted my kernel and I had to overwrite it" - Didn't your studying help solve this problem?
"I'm an excellent software engineer" - oh boy... I need to laugh... someone carry on for me please!!
Ahem...
once you understand that this isn't windows and accept that, you'll almost be ready to use linux. Then what you gotta do (and this is hard) is realize that, yes, you can learn new things after windows.
linux isn't windows. it was never meant to be (well, as you discovered, fc2 comes as "close" as any linux distro as has.)
A big problem new linux users seem to encounter is the huge difference in how hardware is interfaced. in windows you run a setup.exe and magically a box pops up and says you have a new network card working.. WOW!. In linux, the kernel has the code for many, many, many NIC's already, and most distro's will include all of them compiled as modules in their default kernels and load the appropriate one when you boot. However, sometimes you'll have 'odd' hardware and it wont be able to find a module for your device... adding new code to your kernel (via patching) or compiling a module outside of the kernel tree isn't ever easy and this is where novice users will fall down and scream till' their blue in the face that "linux blowz".
Once you do it a couple times for various peices of hardware (NIC's [be it wifi or otherwise], video or sound [doesnt happen much, alsa is now included in the 2.6 kernels]) you realize it's not too terrible.. but it takes a lot of time to get a good feel for everything in linux/unix. The power of unix is in the terminal and always has been. If you dont know much about unix shells before your initial linux experience you'll be left with a severely crippled experience.
Why are we always shocked to hear that Microsoft might be losing market share to competitor X. When you have such a large segment of any market, you are bound at some point to see your lead eroded away.
Regardless of whether or not you love or hate Microsoft/ Linux, the fact remains that both serve a different purpose at the corporate level. While Linux still leads as the most popular platform for hosting websites, Microsoft's IIS leads in intranet sites for most major companies.
There is a place in the market for both Microsoft and Linux -- Microsoft's biggest problem is IBM and others push of Linux to the masses. Without heavy licensing fees, and with IBM's focus on small business consulting, they can easily modify Linux to suit individual companies wants and desires. This customization, currently, is not a key part of the Windows system. That is what direction, IMO, Microsoft should look in taking itself to compete.
(For the record, the offering of the new stripped down version of XP to many developing nations is one example of truely targetting your market).
But what I find most stupid is the philosophy behind it. Why make something so complex for free? I'm an excellent software engineer, good software is hard to make, it's beyond art, takes incredible amounts of education, hardwork and talent, and it should be kept proprietary and one should be paid to make it.
You say that good code is like a work of art - if it is, then why don't you do what an artist does? An arist creates a small number of great paintings(programs), has a showing (creates a company website), and sells them to the highest bidder, and sells each painting only once. The artist does not care if that painting is subsequently copied by another artist - in fact, it is seen as a compliment by most!
Your age shows in the post (first tried RedHat 8.0 in University), so let me educate you a bit on the history of programming. Before Microsoft came along, it was common that software (and a whole lot of its code) was free. Why? Because most programmers worked for hardware companies, who were interested in selling hardware.
Does IBM make any less money if it ships a server running Linux or Windows? No, in fact they likely make more money since they don't need the Windows license markup and can thus charge less.
Personally, *my* wish in life is that eventually, all "software companies" are abolished; programmers will either work for hardware companies customizing their OS/driver platforms, or they will work as consultants, customizing existing open source software to the business, with the end product from both of these endevours going back to the public.
Really, if I as company X spend some time customizing an application to by business, what harm does it do to release the code? None, other than it may save someone else time and money in the long run. God forbid it be a compeditor - but what if it saved a non-profit like World Vision millions of dollars??? Isn't that worth it? Are you really that greedy of a copany, that the chance that it may help a competitor outweights the chance that you could be saving people's lives? (Sze note: from the behaviour of most companies, the answer is a resounding yes.)
Just as a note, I say the above as a professional programmer with a software company as well. I know to some people like you it might seem weird for me to be advocating the elimination of my profession, but really, I am in it for the love of what I do, not the love of money. When you do something for the love of what you do, you will always find a way to make ends meet.
nice troll.
well, then use windows. really, it's okay.
it's too bad you didn't learn anything during your unix studies. if you had, solving the trivial problems you mentioned would of been an afterthought.
It's good to see people using GNU/Linux where it shines. Stability, performance, maintainability, auditability, and continuity are all important qualities for server deployment. They are also qualities that GNU/Linux offers more than most other solutions. What of the BSDs, though?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Can anyone track down the original Gartner report that indicated 50% of server sales would be Linux by 2008? The linked article just mentions the Gartner report (and all-important statistic) in passing, but doesn't provide a proper reference for fact-checkers. Google didn't do the trick for me, it did turn up an article about an IDC report released in June 2004 that predicted Linux server shipments would rise to 29% in 2004, a fairly significant difference.
Novell's stock is looking pretty attractive at $5.80, given that they're trading close to their 52-week low and now own SuSE, one of Red Hat's only commercial competitors. Mind you, Red Hat is actually earning a profit these days, even though their price::earnings ratio is about 100.
So is it time to invest in Linux stocks (again), except this time with an eye for the long-term instead of the wild ride of the late 90's?
I started using Linux by acquiring RH Linux 4.0 in 1995. It installed perfectly out-of-the-box with ethernet 10Mbit/s enabled.
The linux kernel is an amazing piece of work; fast
and stable on both new and antiquated hardware with a single kernel version; unfortunately Linux can be a hassle when trying to get some hardware etc. to work.
Idealism does not provide for bread and butter instantly. You can take care of yourself AND appreciate this idealistic movement. Free software uses companies and companies use free software for different purposes; different incentives, GNU terms.
Recognizing the world is unfair does not justify abandoning your values and playing the bitter victim.
...I'll bite anyway...
/dev/cdrom /mnt cdrom | konqueror /mnt/cdrom' - far more hassle than it would have been had I not had a techy moment, but certainly not complex - nowhere near as complex as trying to get my (network card/graphics card/soundcard - choose one) working under almost every Windows version I've used (from Win98 to Server 2003).
.kde*'-ing solved it - thank you Google!). So am I alone in finding all these horror stories about hideously complex interfaces and disasterously misplaced 'rm -rf' commands? I don't think I'm the only one.
I see this sort of opinion piece a lot, and can't help thinking I must have been extraordinarily lucky with my Linux installs - I can honestly say I've had more trouble configuring a Windows installation correctly than I have a Linux one, and the most complex thing I've had to do to get my CD-ROMs working correctly was create a link to it via the KDE desktop context menu - Before I worked that out (right-click should have been my first option, but no, I felt techy) I did it by creating a link to do 'mount -t iso9660
So have I just been lucky and (honestly - Linux gurus, try to think from the perspective of a total newbie like I was) Linux is far from complicated and this guy is just trolling? I'm surprised by the amount of Linux horror stories out there, as I dived straight into Debian without almost any prior Linux knowledge (2hrs on RedHat on a friend's system) and have only managed to wreck things twice (I once nuked my graphics drivers trying an update from CVS and it didn't work at all well - X refused to start, and much poking around with the command-line brought it back to life - I was quite impressed as that was a lot deeper into the CLI than I had been before, and the other time was when I loaded a corrupt theme that managed to nuke my KDE - going in as root to the directory and 'rm -rf
The point about Mandrake is well-founded - I didn't try it out until after I had aquired technical knowledge from curiousity making me poke around in Debian and I just found it extremely limiting - can't log in as root? that would have fucked me right up if I'd nuked my KDE like I did with Debian - I'd be left with no way to fix it on my single-user-and-root system, but Linux in itself is not hard - by the time you've practiced enough to be a Windows 'power user' you'd have acquired the ability to do three times as much under Linux - I'm not even going to mention security, I'm just talking about ability to do things and do them well in an ideal-world system (no viruses, worms, etc). I'm not even trying to plug Linux over Windows here, I like Windows, I still have an XP machine for games and the occasional nostalgia trip, and it is a good OS in many ways, but Linux hugely technical and impossible to use? No sir. I genuinely find it easier to use Linux than Windows now, and I've only had it on my main machine for a few months. I don't think I could have made that switch in reverse that fast - even after just 3 months on Debian I found Mandrake hugely restrictive, and believe me, I am far from a technical person (studying in Psychology, not a hugely computer-related field). I picked up a lot about Linux without even noticing, just poking around with a curious cursor or command or two. A few months on Linux and without even trying, I've acquired enough knowledge about the OS to do many things faster and better than Windows, and I wouldn't go back - Like I said, I like Windows XP, but I find I can now do so much more with my time.
So, Slashdotters, be honest with me - have I been lucky? do I have some sort of mysterious gift? or is Linux actually easy to get into?
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Well, firstly, Im not surprised you got some flamebait modding. What did you expect??
..all the unneeded stuff is removed.
In your rant, you focussed on the install / setup issues with Linux. Firstly, as a loyal Linux user myself, your main problem seems to be that you are not prepared to get your hands dirty. This is what you have to do if you use Linux. You are no longer in your magical lala land where you click on the magical ice cream and everything is just fine - not true. Linux is more honest. Operating systems ARE complex, and if you want to use them then all the better it is that you learn as much as you can about them. Let me put it this way. And this is a classic ananlogy used by many. A car. With Linux you can look under the hood and see the gaskets, valves and battery etc.. In fact with some Linux distos - you are shown this as part of the install - especially my chose distro - Slackware. You actually find yourself learning as you install and configure the system. And this is a deliberate degign by these guys. I guess you have to an optimistic person to use Linux - you have to see the complexity as a learning journey, a right of passage as opposed to an annoying waist of your time. Linux IS honest. From the beginning, you have to learn and if you are prepared to, you WILL make it work, becuase its Open Source - there are documents to show how everything works, and the source code for those documemts to back that up. You set ip up, and you know EXACTLY what you are getting and what its going to do. So why do Linux sys admins get more money than Windows counterparts generally? Isn't it obvious? A Linux sys admin van guarantee you what the server is doing. You have so much more control expecially performance-wise control. You mentioned the kernel - good. What is benefical about compiling the kernel - significant performance gain. You really do have to try it in a different perspective. What if your server is going to perform some mission critical application. What if you need to run a brute force algorithm that (when finished) regardless of the result it generates, will be of Scientific imporance that benefits the commumity as a whole. Wouldn't you like to know you are squeezing every drop of performance you can. Wouldnt you like to know that it probably wont crash ( because you know what its doing) and if it does crash, you can potentially know what caused it to crash with much more ease. What if the algorithm need to run for 5 years on the server (cluster) you have? In these cases performance is everything. By compiling the kernel you are locking the source code down onto the specific architecture of the server. With Windows you get a generic binary ball that is not optimized. With a Linux kernelm you can configure it to remove any bloat you do not need. Lets see, sound drivers - not gonna need them I'll remove that entry, gnome (GUI) not gonna need that - outta there. You can tailor the kernel (the core, and most important ingredient of the OS) for your needs. You can strip it down to the bare minimum so that when its running flat out on a server it is tailored for that server in terms of optimization and what you need in terms of services, whatever they be - samba, bind, tcp
Essentially, the kernel compilation step is a sacred wonderful thing. If you took the time to embrace Linux, you would be enlightened by its power. You are not forced to use anything, particularly not 3rd party propreitary stuff. You make it into whatever you want.
Yes, its challenging but when you're done you can sit back and sigh to tourself "Heck that was painful at times, but I sure got that server stripped down to run flat out. You cannot compare it to Windows.
27.9% of statistics are made up.
As you state, this will work best if the result of the work is returned to 'the community' for others to find and improve upon or adapt. Right there is the core of the argument for encouraging the use of free (GPL-ish) over open (BSD/Apache-ish).
1) What do they mean by "shipped"? is this only the units sold by people like Redhat, IBM, etc.. Or does it take into account all the versions of Linux download and used? With Windows its easy to say "I have sold x many licences, therefore there are x many servers/users" but with Linux you cant - the numbers are likely to be a lot higher.
2) It's nice to see the SCO lawsuit had such a dramatic effect that the total number of unit of Linux sold has risen. 30+Million dollars of MS^H^H SCO/Venture capital money burnt, with no tangable benefits - other than cementing linux place in the world of IT.
I wonder how worried MS really is about this?
I get an inclining of how the Ewoks/rebels must have felt as the sole destroy, all encompassing, stiffling empire fell apart around them. *sigh* Sometimes life is good...
Jaj
Nope. Don't invest now. Wait a bit more. Remember, there is a low barrier to entry to the Linux market. It is and will remain very competitive. RHAT mad a big mistake by not continuing in the retail market for Linux distros. Their accountants will continue to pile on the mistakes. When RHAT returns to it vision of knocking off Microsoft and being the vechicle for WORLD DOMINATION, then it will be time to invest in RHAT. As long as the bean counters think in terms of quarterly numbers and miniscule market share then they'll take off. If some other Linux company doesn't figure it out first.
Sell.
I don't care about which OS people think is better, or which OS has the best philosophy. I'm about using the right tool for the job, and at the moment Linux is the right tool for servers. Web servers, file servers, etc. It's great for that. No, it's the best thing in the world for that. However, I won't have it on my desktop. Sure, it has pretty GUI installers now, but underneath the prettyness is a seriously complicated subsystem, that is mostly unnecessary for normal computer users. I use my windows PC for games, downloading bittorrents, watching movies/media, etc. I know I can get a windows box set up to do all that in next to no time, regardless of hardware. On linux, while all the elements are there, it's not that easy. Hardware compatabilities, special tweaks to system/conf files, multiple packages to install, etc. It's just not what most people want to do. I can understand it if your PC is you raison d'etre, but for me, it's just the box on which I type and watch movies. I don't want to have to load up a text editor to install new drivers for my graphics card, then to find that my Windows emulation/whatever software doesn't work with my game. I, like most people, want hassle-free computing. When linux gets there, I'll be FIRST in the queue. I'd love an OS that does what I want like Windows, yet offers me just a couple of the cool features Linux does (built-in NAT for one thing). Until then, I'll stick with Windows, as I'm lazy ;)
ISS isn't an OS, something which you are comparing it to. Apache would be its direct competitor and in any case, Apache is bigger than ISS.
Jonathanjk.com
If by preinstalled unit sales, presumably sometime in the next four years.
If by distribution sales, probably next year or the year after.
If by legitimate installed base, Linux is probably well in the lead already.
If by total installed base including warez, probably next year or the year after.
If someone makes a virus that downloads a modified Debian and replaces MS-Windows, IIS and VBSCript with it without noticeably interrupting the services on the machine, about two weeks after that.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Just yesterady, I got an email from a local sys admin about Win Server 2003. He said it wouldn't boot so he couldn't install it. To make a long story short, he was trying to boot the server with the MS Office 2003 CD (the office suite, not the OS).Later that same day, the same sys admin sent another email about needing to reboot the exchange server to "clear up" a problem.
The moral of this story is that *most* sys admins are not capable of installing or using Linux (or any other OS) unless it's dumbed-down to the childish level of the current Windows OSes.
I wonder if they count SOHO (small office home office) network appliances in the count. Many of the small easy to manage small network storage and connectivity appliances use Linux or OO software. Examples that come to mind are some of the broadband routers, the ActionTec dual PC modem, and the Buffalo LinkStation net attached storage and print server.
Windows OS prices and bloat keeps MS products off these embeded OS items, even though MS markets their embeded Win CE as a capable product for the embeded devices market.
The truth shall set you free!
Or perhaps you should be writing BSD/GNU/Linux, since a goodly share (possibly most: think about PostFix, Apache, SendMail, PostgreSQL, BIND, XFree86 and the zillion or so other most-used apps which are BSD-or-similar licenced) of the software in a distro uses a BSD-ish licence.
I'm personally a fan of the GPL, and licence all of my own creations under it by default, and do appreciate the GNU tools forming a significant part of a distro - but "GNU/Linux" is a ridiculous and cumbersome assertion.
Mind you, I'd find "BSD/Windows" or "GNU/ServicesForUnix" deeply amusing.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
While it is news that even Microsoft admits that Linux is making inroads in the server market, there shouold also be a warning here.
Microsoft is almost certainly not going to take this lying down. Their biggest development effort right now is Longhorn. Some of the things that they say about Longhorn (the fact that they need to roll it out on clients and servers at the same time, in particular) makes me think that they will modify the networking protocols enough that Linux servers will no longer be able to play with Microsoft desktops.
Many large companies out there are running Windows on the desktop and connecting them to Linux servers. I think when Longhorn is released they may not have any choice about what server software to use anymore.
But what I find most stupid is the philosophy behind it. Why make something so complex for free? I'm an excellent software engineer, good software is hard to make, it's beyond art, takes incredible amounts of education, hardwork and talent, and it should be kept proprietary and one should be paid to make it.
Perhaps we enjoy writing code? Perhaps we want people who otherwise couldn't afford the software to have it? Perhaps we think it's a better way of programming.
Not everything in life is about money, you know.
I especially hate the service pack/documentation CD's etc. They look just like the installation CD's except for some tiny text. But hey, the holograms are cool.
There is a 'seriously complicated subsystem' underneath windows too. The difference is that microsoft has spend a lot of time guessing the kind of things the "average user" might want to do and making those options easy to get to. Linux doesn't really hide its complexity in the same way, at least not until recently. It has/had GUI tools, but they weren't designed to simplify things for the user, they were really designed more for power users. It was just another way to do things for the poweruser (cause those really are/were the only ppl using linux.)
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
It's like I'm back in 97 again!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
See http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/opinion/07kalche im.html
Statistics are always relative to some baseline axioms. When the axioms are not relevant, the statitics are little more than useless trivia.
Netcraft confirms it, Windows is dying.
:)
Just kidding.
The reason incompetents don't get fired is because competent people cost more, at least from a hard-dollar perspective. Incompetence costs a company money, but in ways that are hard to pin down. It's far too easy for someone to shift blame; one of the keystones of Dilbert-esque companies is that it's virtually impossible to point to one person and say, "The buck stops here." Where I work, you can't even volunteer for the position. People think you're trying to make some kind of power-grab. Management wants to pretend the developers are all interchangeable cogs, shuffling us between teams as staffing needs dictate, and then they wonder why the overall result is mediocre.
If I wrote on here "water is wet", does that mean it ceases to be? :-P
...XPSP2 and decide that longhorn just isn't worth it-the risk, cost, headache, bugs, etc- and switch the desktops to some linux instead of the servers back to MS.
Honestly, the only thing I can see coming with MS is for them to go completely on the offensive with patents and copyright lawsuits and hope to scare and bully and maybe even legislate their way to staying topdog. I don't see them being able to do it on just quality/price and a normal market scene for much longer. The only people left who aren't considering Linux are very casuasl and unsophisticated home users, anyone more technologically savvy above that level is at least thinking about linux now. At some time MS will feel threatened enough to start using their portfolios very agressively, think SCO type action times 1,000. They could carve out a few billion just to start the lawsuits and not break sweat. Then they could start lobbying. We have the easiest bribed legislature and executive branch and probably judges evah now. This is the most high level "consultant fee" friendly government I can remember going way back. Those who already have the coin to spread around are not hesitating to "share the wealth" with those charged with maintaining what passes for "law" nowadays.
This is simply not true. I've spent the last 8 years working for big multinational banks. They all have internal support organizations. When something breaks, you call the tech support hotline, which is usually to the bank's internal support group. In a few banks, this function is contracted out to a company like EDS, whose people would be on-site. Nobody ever calls the manufacturer or the software publisher. I've watched the tech support guys fix problems, and they don't call the manufacturer or software publisher either, they fix the problem themselves (which might sometimes involve replacing the machine or reinstalling the software).
even more curious, his name is SlashBOT Hive-Mind, with a b.
could this be some sort of script that searches the internet for rants and matches them with slashdot topics ?
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Nor would vendors be the ones to install updates to any Linux system my company purchased (you do realize that HP/Dell/Whatever now sell servers with Linux preinstalled, don't you?).
could this be some sort of script that searches the internet for rants and matches them with slashdot topics ?
It wouldn't surprise me. I stumbled into the anti-/. world a while back, and it appears that no task is too trivial for these kiddies.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Look into it. Gartner ALWAYS favours Microsoft products. (ie. "Windows has 95% of the market share" -- this stats doesn't include cell phones, PDAs, game platforms, but does include sales of old PCs.) Skewed for sure.
Wonder why? Look into it. Gartner Inc. is a "separate" firm created by a certain firm to create (sell) all of these statistics (ultimately to serve the purposes of the firm.) Microsoft owns at least 20% of this underlying firm.
Targeting your market is correct, but not the way you think. This wasn't a way to offer a low cost version, this was a low cost version they could use to make people stop asking for low prices.
Get a free ipod.
Linux is quite hard to get used to and I think putting an older Base unit to work as a webserver is a pretty good introduction to Linux, putting webpages into htdocs isn't difficult. I first ran apache under windows but found the box would crash regularly linux is much more stable.
6 21 .pdf
Stage2 into introducing linux has to be vnc (get realvnc and play with 2 windows boxes first) however configuring it isn't that easy with linux which is where I recomend this book as a step by step guide to a lot of things, chapter 4.5 tells you how to set up VNC.
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246
now you have access to your linux box from your windows machine 24/7 without a second mouse keyboard and monitor. just run the vnc client its easy.
and if you get confused fed up or just had enough close the window and forget about it for a while. Oh and check out the book reference I gave earlier as it explains clearly how to achieve specific tasks.
before I get modded off topic consider that there are 1000's of people reading slashdot who are at the point of trying linux and give up because they "don't get it" so a simpleweb server project justifys having the machine running and remote desktop access makes it easy to play with. maybe some experienced linux users might even be willing to provide a url where anybody can access a linux desktop and let people try it out without installing anything.
Is microsoft counting these small servers when it's counting percentage server share, I doubt it.
so hopefully interesting and informative rather than offtopic and that pdf file is gold. It's the most informative file on linux i have found to date.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Only middleware is a "waist of your time."
(Sorry about the pun-ishment...)
You sound as one of those 'excellent' software engineers that advice a complete reinstall of a workstation when that station does something for which your MS knowledgebase doesn't supply you with an answer within 10 minutes. You are one of those guys always carrying those CD Packs, because you never know when you need to reinstall.
/. is way above your league. Please go back to your 'tune your OS in 24 easy steps' beginners guide.
In other words: you have no clue on how software and hardware interact and you probably don't even know that it is possible to fix a problem without reinstalling your OS and in many cases even without rebooting.
...the point is "you tried". If the market leading OS craps out your production machine, it is Microsofts fault, or Dells, or computers in general, unreliable PoS as they are.
If it is your Linux ISO running on noname (but solid) hardware and it craps out, it is your poor management, incompetence and sys admin skill.
It may be *equally* little your fault, equally little you could have done to prevent it, and nowhere to get damages, yet the perception is completely different. That's the problem.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I know a lot of companies who are getting Linux in and particularly using it for certain jobs (like firewalls/mail servers) and in those cases they are simply finding an old PC sitting in a corner and getting a distro and following instructions on a website.
Of course, some giant size companies may not be doing this, but smaller companies with limited budgets are.
What I find strange is that it seems to be ok for some licenses to add restrictions not in the GPL, but not for others.
The GPL (in section 6) disallows posing additional restrictions on
redistribution etc. of GPLed software (including combined works consisting of some GPLed and some non-GPLed software). This means that software under a license that poses restrictions that are not in the GPL can be combined with GPLed software, but the result may not be redistributed.
Now consider, the Artistic License, Version 2.0. This is listed under GPL-compatible licenses.
Consider, also, the XFree86 License, Version 1.1. This license is listed under GPL-incompatible free software licenses.
The XFree86 License 1.1 is deemed incompatible, because it requires that the software includes an acknowledgment of XFree86 in the same place as other such acknowledgments.
The Artistic License 2.0 allows redistribution of a modified version only if it is clearly marked as such. The GPL contains no such requirement to my knowledge.
So, the question is, why is the AL2.0 considered GPL compatible, but not the XF1.1?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Interesting that MSFT only expects 10 to 30% of their Software Assurance customers to renew. Not a surprise to anyone but MSFT. lol.
For some reason when I hear "Software Assurance" I always think of "Information Retrieval" in the movie Brazil. Great, now I've got that song stuck in my head all day. Dun-dun-dun, dun-ta-da-ta-dum....
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Once you do it a couple times for various peices of hardware (NIC's [be it wifi or otherwise], video or sound [doesnt happen much, alsa is now included in the 2.6 kernels]) you realize it's not too terrible..
"After knocking your head against the wall a few times, you won't feel the pain anymore" is maybe a decent analogy. Even if the kernel needs to be recompiled, it really shouldn't take more than something like 1. RMB->Install kernel module 2. Enter root password 3. Wait. (Unless that module requires its own configuration).
It's not that I couldn't figure out how to compile a kernel (I do compile other stuff), but it is completely and utterly uninteresting for me to waste time learning how. Mostly I'm just looking for new hardware support (rather than odd hardware), and then the solution is to upgrade to the latest kernel. No upgrade pressure in Linux, heh.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I am aware of large financial firms moving to linux big time. In fact, linux has pretty squashed the hopes of Microsoft ever getting into mid to large corporations for backend stuff. By moving, I mean buying thousands of rackmount servers with or without windows. I'm sure there's lot of fudging of statistics and system that are actually running linux are being miscounted as windows. The situation is most likely getting worse as time goes on. Many of the shops that traditionally run Sun have been screaming for Sun to sell x86 boxes, so I suspect fewer sales loss to windows in the future. Most of the losses by Sun were to linux and not windows as Microsoft would like everyone to believe.
Growth as a percentage of last period's shipment becomes significant only as total shipments become commensurate with the competition's. If Linux shipped two units last year and four this year then that's 100% growth, but 200% of "negligible" is still "negligible".
:-/
The total shipments of one competitor as percentage of the total across all competitors tells a much more interesting story, and in this case the theme is that Linux is indeed a serious competitor, taking one fifth of new installs.
It's high time to be on the lookout for the problems attendant on success.
It's good to see that even Gartner believes that Linux and Windows will be comparable in 2008. But they are probably greatly underestimating the number of machines that run Linux as a server OS: most Linux installations aren't "shipped" and are hard to count. I suspect there are already more actual Linux server machines than there are Windows machines.
I have installed literally hundreds of different types of modems on Windows (and I assume Linux works in a similar fashion). The driver is for the serial comms port, the type of modem does not matter unless you want to do something out of the ordinary (fax server is ordinary). Use a generic driver, if you like take a copy and call it "mymodem". I once watched my ex-boss and his side-kick spend 3 days trying to set up a modem on windows, calls to support, searching the net.... When they eventually asked me to take a look it took five minutes for me to "code a driver" by changing a few names and modem strings in the ini file of thier application. They started up thier app and hey-presto "Acme modem Series 500-1z" was on thier drop-down list and worked. I'm not an admin, I'm a developer but I am sure a competent linux admin could work the same "magic" in a similar amount of time. The real shame was that a zoologist was in charge of a large mission-critical telecomms project. He was there because he had a "science" degree. That makes as much sense as putting me in charge of the zoological gardens because I also have a "science" degree. The point of this rant ( and I don't mean to pick on you personally ) is that if you don't understand basics then hire someone who does.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think the biggest gains for Linux comes at the server level, where the stability of Linux and its very low licensing costs have made gains especially against commercial UNIX variants like Solaris. Of course, it helps that IBM (still a highly-respected name in the computer industry) is heavily pushing Linux for their Big Iron machines on the AS/400 and S/390 architectures.
Alas, Linux is not quite there with desktop machines, especially for home users who want to connect scanners, digital still cameras and digital camcorders. I don't expect Linux to be useful to home users until a number of Linux projects that make it very easy to connect external multimedia devices are completed over the next few years under the Linux Standard Base (LSB) auspices.
I cant even begin to bother with the fuckups that post on this site (linuxsucks.org).Most of them can't even type properly. Not to mention the extreme amounts of Bullshit in some the posts. That site needs a Diaper wrapped around it to contain the smell.
You didn't go for the lower TOC solution, you went for the crappy solution. Don't come back crying when your toy modems start breaking up or underperform.
Yep, might be offtopic, but while we're at it let me give my point of view:
No, I'm not a GNU/Linux naming Nazi, but when people start doing this BSD/X/GNU/Linux extrapolation I can't help but think that it's silly. BSD and X are licenses in that context, GNU is not - and nobody suggested naming it GPL/Linux - the idiocy in the licensing argument against the GNU/Linux name should be pretty obvious, but for some reason it's not.
It makes sense to write GNU/Linux, not because of licensing, but because of history.
We would not have had Linux (at least not in remotely the form or shape that the kernels and distributions are in today), nor would the (free-/net-/open-)BSDs have been where they are today, if it was not for gcc and other early GNU projects.
Yes, plenty of other projects use BSD or other non-GPL licenses. But a very large number of them, and certainly a *very* big portion of what makes up a modern "Linux distribution" today, owes a lot to the early GNU projects.
I'm really wondering how accurate these numbers are. Most servers that will be running linux will come with no OS installed. How are these counted? I'd assume Microsoft doesn't count them at all if no windows lisence is purchaced, and most other places probably count them as linux, but I can't be sure. Also, I really have to disagree with the article that says costs of migrating to linux on a server platform may be high because of adding a new OS to the mix. Any self respecting unix admin is running linux at home. I'm a unix admin at a shop that just started adding linux servers, and I feel MUCH more comfortable on the linux systems than on the hp-ux or solaris systems because I, as well as most of the other admins, run linux at home and have been able to play with every setting we can get out hands on in an environment where no one is going to ream us out for breaking somthing. I can't quite afford to get a HP-PA or ultrasparc system to do the same with the competition. Even the older guys who have been there forever agree that linux is easier to install and configure than hp-ux. Don't even get me started on the windows servers... we only have a few but they take up more than thier fair share of my time, and a text command is always easier then wading through menu after menu.
I am. I work for a division of Apple, and I am paid to "put our best foot forward". I answer Apple questions, I defend Apple from attacks, and I try to point out the good points about us you all seem to overlook. Any opportunity to mention Apple's strengths, I do. I am here to promote Apple's solutions over all other products. I am specifically here to sell Apples to the Linux crowd and to make the inevitable transition to our products easier.
Sure, we get overzealous sometimes, and some of the guys may (ahem)*lie*(ahem) a bit, but overall, without us "paid shills", Slashdot would be a much more Apple-hostile place. We provide a valuable service, one that deserves respect.
I had to check netcraft on this one (linuxsucks.org) and guess what? http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=linuxsuc ks.org
Been up for ~200 days too. Not bad.
This is something that the articles and reports often fail to mention. I know at our company every Linux server we have (and we have quite a few) is running a downloaded distribution. The original server shipped with either no OS or with Windows.
Celebrate the finer things in life
No, an option has quite different properties. First, you have to subtract the premium for the option from your gain, so the stock price has to fall more before you make a profit. Second, the bid/ask spread on options is normally higher than the spread on the underlying stock, further reducing your gain. Third, options expire, so if you buy an option expiring in January, and the stock stays above $26 until February and then drops, you make nothing. (If you buy a longer-term option, you have to pay more for it.) There are other differences.
An option might be suitable for someone who can't check the price every day, since risk is automatically limited to the option price. Options are also a means for an investor who can't trade on margin (for whatever reason) to get leverage. But buying put options is definitely not equivalent to short selling.
And how many of these so called 'linux' units are being immediatly wiped out and replaced with easy-to-copy free2k?
Wait until IT starts switching to a version of Windows with some actual piracy control.
Linux is great. No, it seriously is. It is an absolute a must if you are a geek or a techie who likes to run servers and do all other funky stuff with low cost hardware. It is also great for production servers that need high uptime, education purposes, research, and other purposes that focus on performance, reliability and cost. However, Linux does fail when it comes to desktop and that is where MS and Apple may kick butt in the future.
My aunt does not care if she has to reboot a computer or if her e-mail client fails to get that e-mail. She does not care if a box running Linux can be untouched for days. She is not making money by using her Dell, she does not care if Linux can transfer file faster or if it is cheap. The same goes for millions users who just want something that works without having to hire a guru. Tell me what you want, Linux is still piss poor in that aspect.
I speak from experience. I have a Mac and Linux box setup at my house. The linux box is a web server/development box, the Mac is our office computer. The latter is being used by everybody, because people do not want to deal with buggy interfaces, additional configuration or unexpected results that are rather frequent if you use GNOME or KDE. Again, I am not talking about myself. I understand how the system works and it takes me a couple of seconds to fix most common problems; however, my girlfriend freaks out whenever she sees a strange error message or something screwy. She prefers Macs because "they are just nice, neat and they work without you having to do anything." Once Linux gets to that point, we'll talk about world domination.
These were softmodems, where the modem is actually just a digital signal processor, and the modem is achieved in software, which is near impossible to write. That's the problem. You can't just "write" a softmodem driver in Linux. That's why that company charged me for the driver.
We didn't go for the crappy solution. We went for the cheapest we had. "Use the modems we have, and have it installed in one afternoon" versus "buy 4 more modems, a comm card, and install linux and get hylafax working with them" or "use the modems we have, buy a driver for them (x4), find out the driver doesn't work, then install windows and get it working in one afternoon". If you choose step 2, you should see if your ideology isn't clouding your judgement. Just a thought.
It sounds simple to just get rid of bad employees. But very few managers want to let people go. In fact an employee has to screw up really badly, and repeatedly, before most large companies will let someone go.
At a really small companies (less than 100 people say) it makes a huge difference if someone is capabile or not and bad people will not linger long. But at a large company, even if someone is not the brightest they are but a small cog in a giant engine, and so the drag from that single point of ineffeciency is not felt the same way. Letting someone go only brings the attention of HR down on you, and mostly you want to avoid that. In order to let someone go (if you have an HR department) you typically have to go though many rounds of "performance plans" and the like, which are designed as a huge CYA so that the employer is less likley to be sued for whatever reason by the person who is let go. That all takes time, effort, and paperwork - if you were a manager would you call that process down on yourself, and have an uncomfortable work situation for months - or just let it slide? Most chose the latter option.
There's another aspect as well. A lot of times the managers know even less - so how are they going to know that someone else could be doing a lot better job in the first place?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My state recently got a lottery for the first time in the history of the state. Now millions of Tennesseeans have poured half a billon dollars into the lottery system. Every eligible high school student was able to recieve a college scholarship. The manager of the lottery is paid $350,000 with another $400,000 in bonuses available.
So millions of people voluntarily pooled a little of their spare money together to provide a great benefit to the citizens of the state. (This is not an endorsement of the lottery. I am morally opposed to it and do not participate in it. I'm just using it as an example) Another example of people voluntarily giving or time or money is churches. The Southern Baptist Convention has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm sure the Roman Catholic Church has a budget to dwarf that. People voluntarily gave this money.
Why doubt the power of FOSS when examples of people volunarily giving of their spare time/money and accomplishing great things is all around. Not everyone in the world demands monetary reimbursement for every beneficial act they perform. That's quite a sad outlook on life don't you think?
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
I mean, why would anybody want to? They are resource hogs, and you are controlled by a huge corporation. With linux, you setup what you want, what you need, nothing more, nothing less. No corporation will force you to "upgrade". I just don't get it.
Meh.
The reason you're having problems with your drivers is that you're working on an OS with a tiny market share, so very few companies are willing to write drivers for it. It's got nothing to do with the quality of the OS: do you think Microsoft writes all those drivers on your Windows box? Hell no, they get the drivers from the vendors, check them out, and bundle them with Windows.
If you want a seamless Linux (or BSD, which I personally prefer) install, you need to make sure your hardware is well supported. If you want to run it on whatever random hardware you happen to have around the place, you're going to occasionally have problems.
You have problems with your network and sound cards... blow them off. Go and buy cards that are known to work with Linux. You'll still come out ahead: you can probably buy a whole new motherboard, let alone a couple of cheap PCI cards, for less than you'd have spent on a Windows upgrade.
I read the site. It seems mostly made of posts calling Linux users "fucks" or "commies". It doesn't seem terribly productive. If they hate Linux so much why don't they try to forget about linux entirely and focus on something more constructive? I really was hoping for a site that could make some legitimate criticism of Linux.
Like how it's poorly supported by most hardware vendors. And the vendors that do support it hand out drivers that are as buggy as windows drivers and make them closed source so people can't possibly fix them.
Anyways, anyone who tries to claim I am stupid or lame or wrong because of what OS I run is the stupid/lame/wrong one. People shouldn't care what OS other people run (I don't care that my gf runs windows, I even paid for her copy of XP). People should only care about what OS they themselves run. It's a lot like religion or text editors.
Let's start a linuxsuckssucks.org so we can post childish comments about how much we hate those anti-commies.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Really, if I as company X spend some time customizing an application to by business, what harm does it do to release the code? None, other than it may save someone else time and money in the long run.
It does you harm if you don't release your changes, because you're forking and cutting yourself off from the ongoing pool of development when you do. Better to see your changes included in the next version than have to port or rewrite them.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Oh look, the driver is in the form of source code, I have to compile it. So I tried to compile it with the configure script that came along. Oh wait, I need some !@#$ing stupid C library.
Iewww. Since when do kernel drivers link to the (std)C library?! Please note that the C library is only used by userspace programms (it is the interface for c applications to kernel functions).
"The only people left who aren't considering Linux are very casuasl and unsophisticated home users,"
I think the reality is the inverse, only a few very advanced home users think about a change. Out of the business of course. Well, this is the situation in the real world.
Order of at-faultness for this project not working on Linux, from maximum to minimum:
There was a possible third option, namely Buy hardware supported by Linux or which supports Linux and then get it working in one afternoon (There are plenty of internal modems and HCF/HSF modems that work just fine under Linux). You'd also save yourself $200 or more (depending on what version of Windows you plan to use, + CALs).
If, on the other hand, you fully planned on using Windows from the beginning, then that's your call. But blaming Linux for not supporting hardware despite the fact that drivers for other hardware exist is faulty.
Also, the poster you're replying to needs to realize that yes, external modems are almost guaranteed to work with Linux (and are likely the best option imho), but that they aren't a panacaea, and won't work in every situation. In those cases, one might well look at the internal modems (preferably hardware, not HCF/HSF)).
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
--although most people I know in the joe user category are still using windows, most of them are now fully aware of linux and are "considering" it. I think a few more major MS exploits and more service pack fubars are gonna tip it over. It's started with just the browsers near as I can see, a LOT of people are switching to moz or opera, etc. One semi retired guy I know who absolutely has to have a dependable computer for his home based business was about to start the revolooshun over what SP2 did to his xp box. Man he was hot. He's been a fanatic about staying patched, running anti vir and firewall, all that jazz, best as he could and still got bitten hard by sp2. He ain't switched yet, but I think it's only from one web page he has to access that requires IE to function.
Mostly being a neogeezer my friends are similar or older in age, none of them that I know of are big gamers, so they have much less reason to stay "loyal" to MS than perhaps younger folks who *must* game. Besides that and office, there's little use for staying with the more insecure and buggy and more expensive platform. For most folks I'll add. there's always gonna be some random off the wall software that will only run on "Fred's OS" or whatever. I'm just speaking generally now of course.
A long time ago, ley word "long", I admired MS and thught they were an OK company, although I enjoyed the mac GUI better, but geez, after years of watching them get incredibly rich off of almost total crap,plus being such scummy bags in the market place, I am amazed they still have any market share. I don't know anyone personally who runs windows who hasn't gotten seriously hosed before with a MS install and running it day to day. I know people who just went and bought new computers thinking it HAD to be their fault and the computer was "broken" in the hardware, when all that was wrong was just a bogus OS and tons of viruses and whatnot.
Anyway, I live in Georgia, nice of you to ask. Raining like a big dawg here, musta got over 6 inches of left over huricane rain so far. I work outside so this has been a big surfin and postin day for me.
The article was looking at percent of the value of shipments not the number. There is a subtle difference.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Doh!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
2. The modems were old. We had them already. They weren't bought with linux in mind (though we did try to find some after, that would work with linux, and we couldn't)
3. They do have the specs. They wrote drivers, but the drivers didn't work. If they didn't have the specs to begin with, why are they writing (and selling) drivers?
4. Agreed
Why should I have to seek out special hardware that supports linux? It takes longer, needs more in-depth research, and even then doesn't guarantee the hardware will actually work (See point 3 above). I can just go into a PC World or BestBuy and grab a modem off the shelf, and I know, for a fact, it will work with Windows. I don't even need to look at the small print. That extra time, the phone calls, the research, etc. would cost more than a windows setup. Coupled with the fact Linux takes me longer to install, which is even more money. The modems we used were softmodems - we had them lying around, and they worked fine in the windows box.
You've got to understand I'm not prejudiced against linux or windows or whatever. I'm an essentially lazy individual who will use whatever's best for the job. If linux is cheaper and easier, I'll use it. If windows is, I'll use that instead. I just want you to know if you made a good point in favour of linux, I'll actually take it on board as I'm not some windows fanboy.
We shouldn't have to think "which OS will we be using in 2 years?" when buying hardware. That, to me, just sounds silly. I don't blame anyone for the drivers not working (except maybe the coders for doing a shitty job). Linux is a tiny percentage of the market place, and as such wields little influence on the market. No-one is going to hire developers and QA people to test a driver 3% of their market will use. It's just not viable.
As I said before, I don't blame anyone for this. I just have a problem with people demanding drivers for their OS, which makes up such a tiny tiny percentage of their users it just doesn't make sense. If I wrote my own OS, do I deserve the right to get pissy when nVidia don't devote 2 days a week developing drivers for me? Of course not... I chose an OS with a limited userbase, so I chose limited support. That's just life :)
Both because of the software available under it and the precedents it set.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
That's why the OP suggested a stop.