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EWeek Details Linux to Windows Migration
nakhla writes "Even though we always hear stories of companies migrating from Windows to Linux, eWeek is running a story describing several companies that have migrated from Linux to Windows. Among their reasons are inadequate support options, application compatibility issues, stability problems, and the added cost of troubleshooting."
I read the article and many of the issues faced by the "switch-backers" seemed to be issues with either the software they were running (illegal user entry crashed a web-store) or a poorly managed ISP (after switching from a Linux ISP to a Windows ISP downtime decreased). I also found it just amazing that one company claimed that under Linux there were few options for an SQL server, with Oracle being the only one.
In all my experience I could never imagine a properly developed and deployed Linux solution underperforming a Windows solution or being inadequatly stable. I think that the real problem this article points out (but dosen't mention) is that the numbers of skilled Linux administrators are thinning. Even worse, the number of Linux administrators that only think they are skilled is increasing. Many of my peers going through college now like Windows because that is all they have ever known and don't want to bother learning Linux. The problem also stems from how terrible the consulting business has become. There are far too many businesses out there today that I have run into that have a guy who read Linux for Dummies and is making cold calls to customer sites running Linux implementations.
Basically, it was too hard for people to exploit my system. Now, I've got IE and IIS, and I'm open to the world! That's interopability baby.
Did that just say they switched TO Window$ because of compatibility issues?
Why troubleshoot something that doesn't break? Honestly, just undo the last thing you did. That's all you need for most base installs.
You are not the customer.
Why did they have to use Oracle? Besides this, the article is seriously lacking in details. What type of support issues did they run into? Where they are specific things are even more mysterious. Why did the application die when too many items were ordered at once? And more importantly, what does that have to do with Linux or Apache? It sure sounds like an application problem to me. Another thing that caught my eye is that one of the companies switched to Linux without adequate internal support. If you migrate to something, anything, without training a significant portion of your staff to use it then you are asking for trouble. It seems like these IT directors wanted Linux to fail. It's a trivial task to make a project fail if you don't want it to succeed.
Added to this is that the endorsements are so glowing and positive that there is no way they can be taken seriously. I've worked with both Windows and Linux extensively, and there simply isn't such a thing as a major complex project going off without a hitch, especially when it involves migrating between two very different operating systems. I'm sure there have been similar endorsements made of Linux, "We switched to Linux and all our problems magically went away." I would be similarly skeptical of such claims.
The human resource costs of supporting Linux systems that aren't directly supported by a major hardware vendor can be high. What experiences have people had with vendors that really, truly, officially support Linux? I haven't seen too much direct support from the likes of Dell or Toshiba, especially when it comes to Laptops.
Kris
Kriston
If someone is stuck on using Windows, so be it. If they think the bugs, security issues etc are trumped by "sticking with brand X", then stay with brand X.
...we've recently started migrating large blocks of code from Java to COBOL.
This way to the egress...
Geek sense...tingling...urge to run...overwhelming...
"You will soon be more aware of your growing awareness." - My first recursive fortune cookie!
For the amount MSFT paid Sun, I bet they start switching.
It's easy to argue that the problem is with companies switching away from linux, but the point is that to them linux is just a tool. If you want people to use it, you have to change the tool, not the people.
but shouldn't this article fall under windows.slashdot.org instead of linux.slashdot.org?
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
One of the risks to deal with companies switching from Windows to Linux is their perception on how a system should work.
A boss who's been using Windows since 3.1 will find Linux totally insane to work on because her expectation is an easy friendly GUI that does everything (goods and bads) for you.
That's probably one of the reasons why MS is giving away so many freebies to schools and universities.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
It sounds like they had incompetent support personel and then chose to blame the OS. Once they had someone who knew what they were doing set up everything, suddenly things were rosey. Perhaps they should have set things up right in the first place...but most places tend not to.
I think the biggest problem is microsoft... They purposely try to lock everyone in by making everything as incompatible as they can. Then they go and release half ass tools that have half the functionality to make it appear as though they care.... where is the open standard docs for winfs... now that ntfs support for linux has reached a useable level they need to hurry up and lock us in again.... utter bullshit
Sometimes the majority just means all the morons are on the same side.
everything is bullshit. in 3 days we will hear about who knows how many $ pumped by m$ into those companies.
the article lacks too many details (important ones) to be classified as a news.
it is not. it is made by m$ for their own evil purposes. that's all.
It's been my experience that most organizations have problems because they're staff are inadequately trained. I myself and just as guilty of slapping up incredibly-complex-software-that-has-been-shrink-w rapped-and-commoditized (ie. firewalls, mailservers, database servers, etc...) and the post-incident debrief revealed that of course there were problems- I didn't RTFM.
Apples to Apples though- correctly implemented, it has been my experience that Linux/BSD/*ix stuff is faster, more stable, and just damn better designed. The product evolution strategy is always value driven vs. some other ulterior motive (ie. revenue, locking a customer into your product line, etc). Given this, the freely available Unix distros have always provided me, & the companies I've worked at, the maximum ROI.
And is this an African or European version?
If I was interested in starting a fire, I'd get some gas from Exxon and apply a lighter to it.
...this is EWeek. All the shills that are fit to print (except S.V. Nichols, he's a cool dude).
Why do we expect any different from them? Heck, they may as well give Steve Ballmer his column. I haven't seen so many Microsoft fan-boys since the last Sun shareholder meeting.
Article the to update an post to going are they if wonder if.
The "Linux to Windows Migration" is all about migrating from Windows to Linux.
Point-haried managers jumped on the Linux bandwagon just because it's the in thing to do.
I was hoping to see some large-scale enterprise scenarios where Linux simply did not work - scenarios where it might make sense to put in a Windows solution. Something of substance.
These examples are terrible, and don't even begin to suggest that the issue is a Linux one.
From the article:
"When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges."
This doesn't sound like a Linux issue, it sounds like a boundary check problem. It's ridiculous to propose that this could be an OS function, and they don't back this claim up with any useful substance.
From the article:
Case said he was surprised by how well the system worked, but Linux became an issue when Combe's Web applications needed a database, and the only option available to the company was one from Oracle Corp.
What function of Oracle made it more useful than MySQL in this case? It's certainly a valid DB for Web Applications - even if Oracle might scale better.
These are some pretty baseless arguements for switching to Windows. This is essentially a public shaming of these companies.
The only database option was Oracle? Why didn't they think about back-end indepenence when they designed the application? Oh well... I think they should have looked at dropping their web application platform in favor of a more back-end independent one (J2EE, PHP, whatever) before they just decided to migrate their OS. I just can't imagine anyone these days who would lock themselves into data-tier vendor like that. Of coruse, the article wasn't very descriptive about the "why".
Case also was concerned that his company did not have appropriate in-house Linux expertise. Those concerns were proved worthwhile two years ago when the ISP gave Combe two weeks' notice that it was closing its doors.
Read: "Case didn't want to spend the extra $73,000 a year to hire a full time Sr. Unix Admin to direct his dime a dozen MCSEs." Actually, I dunno, I can't really back that up. Anyone know the cost comparison's on Linux expertise in labor Vs. MCSEs and MS licensing?
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
There are a lot of schlock outfits, out there, that are putting together very poor Linux solutions. The poor client gets burned, and runs back to what they know works for them. A well built Windows solution will beat a poorly built Linux solution.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Case also was concerned that his company did not have appropriate in-house Linux expertise.
This is the main concern I hear, that support costs are the main reasons for switching back to Windows. It's a double-edged sword though, because everyone and his dog's got an MCSE, whereas I'm able to charge more for my Linux knowledge.
This was the same reason why people stayed with NetWare over Windows NT 3.51. Eventually with the release of NT 4.0, Microsoft was able to do more than NetWare for less cost. Linux will do the same thing. Microsoft does not have a lock on ubiquitous tech support, they merely have a head start.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
From the article: There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said. "When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges.
Ok, more a comment on the reporting than the situation, if the store crashed because of this error, surely it's a software issue, i.e. the e-commerce package they were using borked. I would imagine (read like to think), the underlying OS was ok.
For me it's a bad example, they could have well installed on a Windows base and had the same problem.
I'd better run before the moderators come and take me away again. Here's hoping a highly-charged political topic rescues me. :)
Linux IS behind on gaming, desktop productivity, and development tools. The people switching were running php on web servers and oracle database apps?!?! Unix (and now Linux) has been excelling over windows in these areas like forever. Oracle, Progress and all the money-makers of the db world have been running on Linux forever. I don't get this article at all. Eweek didn't 'detail' anything. Linux may have its weaknesses, but they are NOT in the areas these people experienced. Perhaps the hospitality is particularly infested with idiots.
The people in these "case studies" are whining about post-deployment support costs. It will be interesting to go back to these companies in a couple of years and see what their Windows support costs are like.
The article sounds very fishy to it. I think the iceberg rule (u can see only 1/6 th of the etnite iceberg or somethinng like that) applies here. Maybe the MS marketing desparate for a text book case of how good MS is offered them a fantastic deal. Or something like that, (The CEO realized that he had MS stock)
It might be easy for a company to employ a team of "Linux" guys and get the migration over and done with, but it is the employees who are using the system every day.
In my (Windows) company, it's easy to tell an employee to download a patch or open a file, because they knew how to do by default, 90% of "computer people" in the company comes from a Windows background, so while working on a computer, they do things the Windows way.
If you have a Linux system, they will still try to do it the Windows way, and that's where the support/troubleshooting costs still to add up.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
Instead of dealing with the issues raised in the artcle, many people here choose to lay blame at the admins or stupid end lusers. Suck it up. Linux isn't perfect and it certainly is lacking in the business application software. Don't throw up Open Office, that is .00001% of business needs. The relies here are typical of the lack of support sited.
First, some interesting phrases:
"immature Linux ecosystem",
"implemented an e-commerce... decision to go with Linux...We had not budgeted the e-commerce system setup."
"Microsoft executives will take any wins they can."
Sounds like an internal memo? Or maybe some kind of hyped up article.
Has anyone ever seen Starship Troopers? Remember the little hyperlinks in the newscasts in the movie. Reading the article gave the feeling a being a human getting ready to fight huge intelligent bugs.
Is this what a Microsoft employee feels like?
OOooooo small biz going with Linux/Oracle are dissed that things aren't better.... Why even try to kill a fly with a bazooka? Why were they even running their own sites? Wasn't there an IBM solution there for them to use? I call this report a lame attempt and it is most definitely geared towards the ignorant masses where it is good not to trust the techies that write the programs but rather a large corporation that want to milk their boobs until kingdome come. People it is time to severe the tech idiots. They are wilfully not trying enough and don't have real computer literacy (neither point-n-click and command line is computer literacy) so either they get with the snowball Linux or get the fcuk out of our way.
Remember this from 2003?
"Microsoft has seen a 300 percent increase in the last three months of the number of Web sites hosted on its recently launched Windows Server 2003 software--with a considerable amount of the new business representing migrations from Linux, according to a survey published this week."
http://www.wininsider.com/news/?5483
Then a few months later it turned out they'd simply paid a domain holding company to hold domains on Windows server. A few months later they switched back.
Sounds like they've paid a few companies to switch for the PR value. It's difficult to imagine that companies switch, then profess their previous bad decision to the press.
The sad fact is, these people tried to move away from windows without really learning about linux and exploring their options. This reeks of bad management to me.
Funny that they blame bad management on linux. Is it good for our country if using Microsoft allows a company to have bad management like this?
Either that or Microsoft paid them a lot of money to do fake "transition" stories to give linux bad press. I certainly wouldn't put it past them.
two words: poor planning
> from the flying-north-for-the-winter dept.
shouldn't that read "northwest"?
This is a great story-- just like hearing about all the people that switch from chewing gum to smoking cigarettes or playing Russian Roulette with Nurf guns to playing with 9mm Glocks. Fortunately, they won't be around long.
The arguments used by the two companies seem to be words taken directly from MS.
For one, they claim lack of support and give their own solution to it as well -- they don't have any technical linux staff. To switch over to linux without having anyone with the know-how to run linux seems naive, and is only asking for trouble.
Saying that there is only one available database for Linux shows they hardly did any research. This is further proven by a quote from them: "Even though [Linux] has moved into the realm of a production-level system and may become a competitor to Microsoft, that is just not the case where global support and robust development are required.". Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in all my years developing on Unix, Linux and Windows, I can honestly say there is not a more robust development system than Linux or Unix, and global support for the development tools on Linux far outrank those for Windows development tools, where internet development is concerned.
I would not be surprised if these companies were sponsored by Microsoft to switch to Windows and find to some reasons to support or justify that decision.
Furthermore, these are small, non-technical companies whose tech-deparments either consist solely of MSCE's or are hopelessly inept (or both). I don't believe their reasoning is worth serious consideration, and as such I find it strange that they made it to the slashdot frontpage.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
This article was previously published under Q314458
For a Microsoft Windows 2000 version of this article, see 247804.
SUMMARY
This article explains how to remove the Linux operating system from your computer and install Windows XP. This article assumes that Linux is already installed on your computer's hard disk, that Linux native and Linux swap partitions are in use (which are incompatible with Windows XP), and that there is no free space left on the hard disk.
NOTE: Windows XP and Linux can coexist on the same computer. For additional information, refer to your Linux documentation.
MORE INFORMATION
To install Windows XP on a computer on which Linux is currently installed (and assuming that you want to remove Linux), you must manually delete the partitions used by the Linux operating system. The Windows-compatible partition can be created automatically during the installation of Windows XP.
IMPORTANT: Before you follow the steps in this article, verify that you have a bootable disk or bootable CD-ROM for the Linux operating system, because these steps completely remove the Linux operating system from your computer. If you intend to restore the Linux operating system at a later date, verify that you also have a functional backup of all the information stored on your computer. Additionally, you must have a full release version of Windows XP to use during this installation. If you intend to use a Windows XP upgrade CD-ROM, a CD-ROM of a qualifying Windows product must be available. Setup from the Windows XP upgrade CD-ROM will prompt you for this CD-ROM.
Linux file systems use a superblock at the beginning of a disk partition to identify the basic size, shape, and condition of the file system.
The Linux operating system is generally installed on partition type 83 (Linux native) or 82 (Linux swap). The Linux boot manager (LILO) can be configured to start from either of the following locations:
-or-
The Fdisk tool included with Linux can be used to delete the partitions. (There are other utilities that work just as well, such as Fdisk from MS-DOS 5.0 and later, or you can delete the partitions during the installation process.)
To remove Linux from your computer and install Windows XP, follow these steps:
NOTE: For help with using the Fdisk tool, type m at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
The installation process assists you in creating the appropriate partitions on your computer.
Sample Linux Partition
Three years ago, the resort implemented an e-commerce system that used Red Hat Inc. Linux, The Apache Software Foundation's Apache Web servers and MySQL AB's MySQL database; the system was programmed in PHP.
"The decision to go with Linux was a cost-based one," Michele Roy, the resort's chief financial officer, told eWEEK. "We had not budgeted the e-commerce system setup in that year's business plan."
The potential savings were quickly erased by ongoing support expenses, Roy said. "We spent more during the first three months troubleshooting the Linux system than if we had purchased the Windows solution to begin with," she said. "The Linux system could not handle the layers of information needed for internal control of the resort."
Roy also had concerns about the security and reliability of the system. System failures and escalating costs had the resort reconsidering its Linux decision when, over a weekend in late-summer 2002, in the midst of its season-pass sale--accounting for the sale of about 5,000 passes--the system went down. The e-commerce component stopped working for about a day.
Call me silly, but I'd be more than a little suspicious that management needed to be hit by a clue-by-four. If they did not think to even budget for - oh, I don't know, something that sounds like it was a critical system - I'm willing to bet they gave plenty of time to design and develop something works. Seriously, this sounds like something farmed out to rentacoder.com for $200, and they got what they paid for. I suspect that Microsoft had to go in and say they would provide some top shelf resources to help them make a PR case study, because it would not surprise me in the least if they would not bung up an ASP.NET application too.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I worked at Amazon in 2001 when Amazon switched from Solaris/Tru64UNIX to HP Netservers running Redhat Linux, if Amazon hadn't done this the company probably would have gone out of business as the IT costs of the proprietary UNIX systems were too high. Were there problems with this transition? Well yes there were, we used to joke that the website for HP's technical support for RedHat on the Netservers was www.google.com, because God knows that HP was clueless about Linux at the time. But as time passed we killed off a lot of the bugs that the system had and ended up with a very reliable infrastructure.
Linux support is getting better and better thanks to companies such as IBM and Silicon Graphics who realize that if they want to compete in the Linux market that they have to sell real Linux solutions, they can't, as Sun does, and HPaq did, tell customers that they have Linux solutions available and then attempt to push them onto systems running their proprietary versions of UNIX, bait and switch just won't cut it.
For now Linux is cutting into sales of the proprietary UNIXes just as Microsoft Windows NT started to do 10 years ago, but as Microsoft continues to get bad press over security flaws in their OS, and as ship dates for Longhorn continue to slip, and as the price of Microsoft operating systems inches ever skyward while the licensing terms become ever more onerous (and as my sentences continue to run-on...) Linux is going to start taking over a lot of the server space that Microsoft currently owns. IT is becoming a commodity, if two IT vendors can both make the case that their product is going to work for a company then the vendor with the lower cost is going to get the contract, the days of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" which in the 90s became "no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft" are coming to a close. TCA is going to win the day and customers aren't going to care if the system is Longhorn, UNIX, Linux or the new BlargoVAX 666.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
We've just started porting our Perl apps to Java.
;-)
:)
cLive
(let the flame wars begin
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
People, this story tells us all exactly why Windows and Microsoft will always rule in the Enterprise. And until all the zelots PULL THEIR HEADS OUT OF THEIR ASSES and set some standards that make it just a teensie weensie bit easyer for someone who IS NOT A LINUX GURU to install and run a fucking program, well, put up or shut up.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I guess they want to go with a MS SQL then. My friend works for MS enterprise tech support. They get calls for corrupt MS SQL databases all the time, he said. In fairness, I don't know the cause (operator error?) for the corruption because he doesn't say. But it looks like it has its fair share of problems too
Our Windows 'System Admin' makes less than 12/hour and doesn't get much overtime.
Our Linux System Admin makes 60K+/year.
The admin who takes care of our HP(not UX) makes about 80K/year.
Seems like pretty simple math to me.
So, our favorite supplier of vagisil chose a ISV who went out of business, switched to another ISV who didn't know how to support their old software, and is a model of how to run a business with Microsoft software.
Our second (and final) example of all the swarms of companies running away from Linux comes from Mountain High Ski Resort.
The people at Mountain High are a prime example of people who really should be using Microsoft Software. Some of the more classic examples include:
- "The Linux system could not handle the layers of information needed for internal control of the resort."
- Roy also had concerns about the security and reliability of the system [that had no budget for setup].
- "There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said. "When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges."
Now, that last item is the kicker. I don't care if you are running your site on $500,000 IBM servers-of-doom running NASA tested software that is Guaranteed 100% bug-free. If you design any kind of commerce site which not only crashes when someone orders too many products, but brings down the rest of the server AND makes erroneous credit card charges to multiple accounts.... You need to behead your programming team.And now, one final bit of the article put here just for humor:
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
When someone changes from Windows to Linux everyone cheers... when its the opposite then suddently everyone point errors made by them!
Well guess what? Not everyone is happy with a monolithic kernel! I surely am not!
The human resource costs of supporting Linux systems that aren't directly supported by a major hardware vendor can be high. What experiences have people had with vendors that really, truly, officially support Linux? I haven't seen too much direct support from the likes of Dell or Toshiba, especially when it comes to Laptops.
Free Desk
Linux is the right answer for my organization, but it obviously isn't the right answer for everyone. Having in-house experience is a must. Frankly I'm glad to see counterpoint articles like this; it makes us more honest.
1. Oracle is expensive.
2. If your IT staff doesn't know Linux, but knows Windows, they will have an easier time using Windows.
3. If your e-commerce app is garbage, then the system built with it will suck, regardless of whether it's on Linux or Windows.
IT managers need to have some common sense. They should have known all of these things before they ever deployed the system they did. The fact that they didn't take these things into account says more about their IT planning process than about the intrinsic qualitites of each platform. Every IT manager has to make intelligent choices based on their own circumstances and requirements.
I really tried to read this with an open mind, to see what legitimate problems businesses are facing in using Linux. Amazing stories. Absolutely amazing. They did almost everything wrong, and it still kept them operational, for awhile, at least.
... they only came up with two? Out of all the hundreds, nay thousands, of businesses that have experimented with and migrated to Linux, they were only able to find a ski resort and a soap-merchant as examples of the stampede away from Linux? And two who were particularly clueless and dependent on outside support, at that? Looking at the list of Microsoft stuff the ski resort had to buy, for example, I'd tally up at least fifteen to twenty grand in software. I can think of a dozen sysadmins who would have done the job for free pizza and lift tickets.
But
Sounds to me like neither of these business are actually looking for software -- they're looking for Magic Profit Pills, and they want to be able to pay zero bucks for them.
I tried to read this with an open mind, but I'm afraid there was nothing substantive to read. Stories about stupid people being unable to make something work don't tell you anything about what's not working, and they aren't news.
If you do a little sleuthing you will discover this is part of the MS Get the Fud program from May 2004. You relly should visit and admire the Linux = Shareware blurb.
Check with Netcraft and you will find that they reason the switched was that their ISP went out of business and the one that they teamed up with that got them to "switch" has managed to gain ZERO additional clients since. Again Source Netcraft.
Help fight continental drift.
Macs are great for running Microsoft products and they make the fastest PCs on the planet. You can be sure your protected with enhanced DRM with products like iPod. Why not go with the inventor and master of the graphical user interface? Let's face it, Linux just can't support Office and Internet Explorer like Apple can plus it still runs great open source software like Apache.
:-)
Just buy a Mac
Two things aren't shocking here. First is the typical slashdot response of, "Oh, they were idiots, they used idiots, obviously it's their fault." Which isn't really very helpful; most people are, by slashdot standards, idiots. The goal of modern commercial software is to lower the bar such that idiots can use it safely. (That's distinct from the goal of so much open-source software, of providing more power to the gurus while scaring away women and children, to build up the developer's technical cred.)
The other thing that isn't shocking is that Windows is perceived, by some, as being lower cost and more reliable. And again, slashdotters will argue the moon away that it ain't so. And, again, for non-idiots in their lexicon, they're correct. But on average, they're wrong.
Years ago I build a pretty powerful product, cross-platform. Runs on BSD, Linux and Windows, using Sybase, SQL Server or MySQL. All but one sale over the years was Windows. Why? Because that's what the businesses use. Lower training costs. When things go wrong, they're fixable via GUI. Don't need to find a guru, any convenient semi-geek can do the job.
I've been very annoyed by this. I really expected BSD and Linux to take off. But corporates lack sufficient geekpower, on average, to use Linux. And that is the reality that too few geeks are willing to cater to. And I say this as someone who has, in the last year, done hardcore commercial development on all three platforms.
The article does a great job of making Linux seem like a steaming pile of shit whereas Windows is the shining knight. You are expected to just accept this despite the fact that the applications they are using, not the operating system were to blame.
In the second case they complain about how their ecommerce system crashed because of a built-in limit. How does switching to Windows fix this? That's a flaw in the application code and nowhere else. The first case is a little weaker in this regard, but still subtly close. Using Windows doesn't give you more enterprise class database vendor options than Linux does. So again, somehow the availability of applications and their quality is the fault of open source. (Plus, if we take the idiot factor into account, I wonder how much upgrading took place on their 9 year-old deployment.) Right.
I am not, of course, trying to discount their complaints. Open source support is a niche that requires some serious progress. However, that article is so loaded with spin it makes my head hurt.
Why bother.
Section 1: No personnel capable of dealing with Linux - fault of company here and not the software; Database issues - fault of company from not doing a good research - MySQL would probably have worked for them. Section 2: Sounds like poor software programming and design - not the fault of Linux. That is a company issue, not a Linux issue. An item limit per transaction --- what a hoot!!! Article was manufactured with the spin that it was Linux that did it. Nice try but too easily seen. Writer needs to go back to spinmeister school.
The move to Windows was "seamless and efficient. The costs to move were minimal as compared with the alternative of developing a new set of sites," Case said. "We have not had an outage in two years, where before we experienced downtime at least two to three times a year. We have also lowered our TCO [total cost of ownership]."
He said with a bright white moviestar smile while the the little background jingle says "This message has been sponsored and brought to you by Microsoft"
How is what he mentions a Linux issue on itself. He wanted to use Linux with a database other than Oracle obviously. Why didn't he just switch provider then to one that DOES offer other database support on Linux. I'm sure there are more than enough of those around. It's blaming Linux again for sometimes which is not Linux's fault.
"There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said. "When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges."
I can't see how this has anything to do with either Apache, PHP, MySQL or Linux on itself - this is obviously a programming error in the PHP 'e-commerce component' they use. It's like blaming the car manufacturer that your self-made garage collapsed on top of your brand new car and saying that it didn't happen when you bought a car from an other manufacturer.
From what I get of it, they switched to Linux, needed a database to support their e-commerce ideas and then found out they didn't have anyone who knew squat about databases. Could have happened with a Windows/MSSQL solution just as well...
The part I don't get is this:
The biggest challenges are those customers moving from Unix to Linux, who "don't want to rewrite their applications, and most of their staff only know Java"
Either I'm missing something, or this is just plain b*llocks. Last time I checked Java is working perfectly on both Windows and Linux...
Your sig is mine
Availability is the problem...
In the past, the high barrier of entry kept people from claiming knowledge that they didn't have.
I see a lot of people out there that claim expertise if they install the OS or get a service to run. Sadly, this applies to both Linux/*BSD and Windows.
It's even worse when you start getting into the "developer" categories where a homepage and a quick reading of "Web Programming with PHP and MySQL" makes someone an expert in everything from database design/administration to system programming in C.
The article simply points out one fact--people make bad decisions. CIO's are not immune to this.
If there is software error as simple as handling too large a number that crashes the whole system, I'm pretty sure the current OS setup has something to do with it. A program error should not crash the whole system regardless of OS.
Well I guess this underscores why I always turn down that free subscription...
Wow. The article really gives a whole new meaning to FUD.
two companies that have completed the switch from Linux back to Windows cited recently.
Personal care products maker Combe Inc., of White Plains, N.Y., developed and administered its Web sites with an ISP running a Linux-Oracle platform about nine years ago and started the switch back to Windows two years ago.
I guess 2 years ago is recent... but it gets worse...
"There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said. "When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges."
Um. Is it me or does that sound like it has nothing to do with the operating system?
I'd guess this is the second company See how cool and uber their website is now? Many of the categories in their "shop" are just empty, and transactions have been limited to 20 of any one item. So, I ordered 20 of everything....
Opps! An error has occured on the site. If this problem persists, please contact the site administrator.
If you are getting this error at CHECKOUT, please check your Order History to see if the order went through before trying to place the order again.
If the order went through, we have successfully recorded your purchase although you will not receive a confirmation letter with liability release. Please download a hard copy by clicking here.
Phew. Good job its running on Windows now!
What is their uptime? Oh. 8 days.
Admin salary differences between *nix and M$ admins can be peanuts when compared to the amount of money wasted on downtimes, virus damage, patching downtimes, and security outages due to an exploitation.
Ignore the smoke much?
Instead of excuses and dismissals perhaps you should take a closer look at what the article is saying and attempt to figure out how and why it happened. Ignorance and non-constructive criticism aren't going to help your OS. I see this same reaction every time there is negative press about Linux, and I find it truly sad.
You say it's a software problem? No kidding. If you fire up a box with Windows and a box with Linux and don't run any software, they're both going to be stable. (save the predictable reply to this statement please) Software is the reason you run the OS in first place. And if this wasn't a custom written in-house app that crashed, I'd be willing to bet there there are more options for the same type of app for Windows than for Linux. When your software solutions are limitted and buggy, you're going to go elsewhere to solve your problems.
You say the details are to vague? Yup. But that doesn't mean the article isn't valid. Pinning your assumptions on what wasn't said and dismissing what was isn't really a good way to solve potential problems.
In short, why not give the writers the benefit of the doubt and try to figure out what went wrong, instead denying the existance of a potential problem.
only one database available in linux... so the switch to a MS mono culture of SQL php code problem required platform shift.... As though ASP didn't have enough limitations without programers!! How much does eWeek get paid by MS to write this kind of crap!!!. Bottom line, Linux saves my department more than $100,000 per year (avg earnings $1mil for dept). If we switched from linux to windows, I'd have to add two more people, and 4 more servers. My profit margin would drop from 80% to 50%. Am I going to switch to Windows? Only when they pry the keyboard out of my cold dead hands. Let profit rule, not Bill Gates.
Hrm...Well, I'm the low, low man Jr. Linux/BSD admin. You know, the guy that does the "monitoring" adding of accounts and is permanently on call.....yeah, I'm that guy. I'm making around 50 so maybe I am right on track. Still, I think my company would spend a lot more on licensing just for the sheer amount of machines we have out there in the datacenter.
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They didn't switch from Linux to Windows. They had a contract with another company to provide their web site and services, and that company ran Linux. The other company took care of all of the details. It was merely unhappyness that the company with which they dealt would only offer them a (presumably expensive) Oracle database which caused them to start looking for a new provider. It sounds like the guys in charge were never too thrilled with Linux and we're just looking for a reason to stop using it, but until the DB thing happened were dismayed to find that it worked.
This is not a "We ditched Windows for Linux, but now want Linux again!" it's a "We switched contractors and didn't want to switch to one running Linux 'cause we're intimidated by it and have very small penis'."
Move along...
I want my Cowboyneal
The problem with Linux as a desktop environment is the system administration including application installation as well as self-configuration of devices. No one has taken on the problem of administration of installation and configuration of applications in a serious way until Linspire came along.
So this article talking about disillusionment with Linux as a desktop box is a yawner for me. Wake me up when the corps who have adopted Linspire abandon it for Windows.
Seastead this.
I've been a "Windows guy" professionally for about 7 years. I like ASP+IIS+MSSQL as a development platform. But the reasons for abandoning Linux given in the article are just ridiculous. They're symptoms of IT managers who clearly don't know a thing about the systems they run. From the article:
::snicker::
Combe was initially wary about its sites running on Linux, but it moved to offset that risk by making sure its provider contract had built-in service-level agreements. Case said he was surprised by how well the system worked, but Linux became an issue when Combe's Web applications needed a database, and the only option available to the company was one from Oracle Corp.
Oracle is the only database on Linux? Wow, that's news to me. On the high end, IBM's DB2 has been available for quite a while on Linux, I believe. In the midrange there's Postgres and Firebird, and in the lower midrange there's MySQL.
The potential savings were quickly erased by ongoing support expenses, Roy said. "We spent more during the first three months troubleshooting the Linux system than if we had purchased the Windows solution to begin with," she said. "The Linux system could not handle the layers of information needed for internal control of the resort.
Uhh... Linux doesn't support enough "layers of information". Riiiiiiiight. Is there a kernel option for more "layers of information" that can perhaps be enabled? Which operating systems support the most "layers of information" right out of the box?
"Roy also had concerns about the security and reliability of the system. System failures and escalating costs had the resort reconsidering its Linux decision when, over a weekend in late-summer 2002, in the midst of its season-pass sale--accounting for the sale of about 5,000 passes--the system went down. The e-commerce component stopped working for about a day... There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said. "When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges."
This is obviously an application problem and not something intrinsic to the operating system. Sounds like the kind of crappy application error that could happen on any operating system. I can't believe the people involved in these stories even agreed to be interviewed in this article because they look like morons. I would hesitate to share that level of self-cluelessness with a good friend, let alone the world.
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"No uptime is currently available for www.mthigh.com". Awwww - shame
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Atleast in Linux you can FIX the problem - rather then reboot, reinstall, or commit suicide. Windows certainly has it's benefits (I don't know of many, but I'm biast), but one benefit Windows CERTAINLY does not have is easy troubleshooting - hell - a good percentage of MS KB articles tell you it's a known issue - resolution is to completely reinstall Windows. I think it really comes down to education, more troubleshooting required because those admins were not very familiar with Linux. More support options is a geographically limited truth, some areas just don't have many (if any) linux consultants around. The biggest problem I see for Linux, from a corporate perspective, definetally comes from the lack of interoperability of Linux document formats with Windows (See MS Office) document formats. Namely, communications with other corporate offices suffer as a result of a migration. Herein lies the need for standards, to provide a level platform for fair competition. Right now, IMO (is this OT?) Microsoft's most powerfull tool is in fact their monopoly. Most companies don't care to switch software (for the most part) because all their customers, partners, vendors, et al.. use MS products - and that's where compatability issues come up, faulter communications, expand troubleshooting time, and basically just ends up costing money, and pissing off executives when their pie chart looks more like a bar graph. From my perspective, the biggest problem with Windows (when compared to Linux) is that when there's something wrong with Windows - a good majority of the time you can't even identify what 'exactly' is the root cause of the problem - let alone actually 'fix' the root cause of the problem. That alone makes Linux a winner in my book - because with Linux I can 'control' and understand 'exactly' what is happening - whereas with Windows I don't feel I have any 'real' control over what's on my system, how it works, and what method I choose to resolve the issue. Typically, I find the restart button to be the 'fix all' for most Windows related issues.
Translation: Our system was written by mouth-breathing morons, but we'll blame Linux rather than our own poor hiring decision.
Translation: We were too dumb to see if there were any other rdbms systems that run on Linux, therefore Linux is the problem.
This is a non-article filled with non-information. It's boiled down to "idiots do stupid stuff and blame somebody/something else for their mistakes". It happens all the time, nothing new here.
Do you have ESP?
It makes me sick when someone wants to sue sue sue. You can't sue someone for making a crappy OS unless safety is involved.
You do have a choice not to use Windows.
Sybase ASE: same original codebase as MSSQL Server
Oracle: most well-known database engine in the world
MySql: Most popular Open-Source database in the world
PostGres: Not my cup of tea, but its an option
DB2: IBM's DB2... SuSE and RedHat only
I always shudder at the thought of running a database engine on Windows...
When they moved to Linux initially, it was a big deal and there had to be a tech-evangelist within the company that was pushing for it.
:)
Now, the tech-evangelist and/or managment that pushed linux have exited the company, leaving less linux educated people. The majority is familiar with Windows. To justify the switch, of course they ask a Windows tech guy to give some reasons.
No, I did not read the article.
In the first case, the issue was inadequate support from the ISP and inadequate in-house resources in the company. I can see this as valid to a large extent. But the ID10T here was the ISP not the company (who was a victim of the ISP's poor handling of the servers). Of course the lack of internal Linux resources is an issue, but not a major one, but depending on the level of programming, might have been adequate by itself to warrent switching.
In the second case, the ecommerce solution was implimented without proper planning, consideration, and analysis. Perhaps here the customer did not do adequate groundwork or perhaps the solution came from an ISV who did not write proper software. However, in this case, the customer was left with an inadequate piece of software which was not adequately checking its input. Evidently, the customer either was unable to fix the problem themseves or they were unable to get the support they need. The right business decision was made to switch back, perhaps correcting a bad business decision (implimenting an ecommerce package without proper consideration).
In these cases, of course, switching to Windows was the right business decision. In one case, the ISP dropped the ball *big time.* In the other, it seems to me that the IT department was too eager to impliment something that they did not do the basic groundwork to make sure it would meet their needs.
I run a business which does Linux-oriented consulting and hosting. Our hosting services have had virtually no downtime in the six months we have been in operation, leading me to believe that the servers which had down time 2 or three times a year were badly mismanaged. Indeed last time I was running a system that was this unstable, I researched the problem and corrected it! An ISP should know better. (Actually the system in this case was a firewall and was not quite this unstable. The real problem was that the logging would suddenly stop after about a month or so if the firewall rules were reloaded. This required a reboot to resolve-- kernel was the problem, so I upgraded to the latest kernel and the problem went away).
Secondly, my job is often to help businesses make sure that their Linux migrations go smoothly and that the solutions we design meet their needs. The key is planning, planning, planning.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If you have a reliable windows dealer around, with years of experience of making things work right. And you also have a new linux dealer around, fresh out of college and eager for their first contract, who do you go for?
Now, I'm not comparing apples with oranges, but people rarely have the choice of equally experienced linux and windows vendors. And for many people that the experienced windows operators are a better choice than the inexperienced linux operators. Like the article said, they swapped ISP and they got greater reliability -- well, neither linux nor windows are unreliable -- so what's the bet their old linux ISP was a shoddy operation?
I got quite a suprise the other day hearing a linux advocate describing going linux as having more lock-in than windows. You see, where I live there are plenty of windows firms you could hop between if one goes out of business or starts acting unreasonably. But if you go with linux then there is nobody else you can go to if your operator starts gouging you. Ergo, vendor lock-in! Of course, this is a short term position and in theory Linux has less vendor lock-in. But the real world is made up of short term positions, and customers must choose a vendor for now.
Talk about poor planning. "We didn't budget for it, but decided to do it anyways without even considering our support infrastructure."
Jackasses.
-Randy
Conversation
Manager: The system just went down Bob, in IT programming; what should we do?
Bob: I will diagnose the system for any issues (after I am finished irc'ing my day away)
1 hour later
Bob: (gee I had faulty logic in my php program and cost management lots of money, more than my pay check, let me build a fork() spawning program)ITS LINUX MANAGER; SEE SEE I TOLD YAH SO, LINUX PROGRAMMERS PUT A BUG IN IT SO IT HAS BAD LOGIC AND CRASHES THE WHOLE SYSTEM.
Bob: Shows manager output of dmesg to confirm the "crash"
Manager: Gee, I knew Linux was too good to be true, lets switch to Windows, a professional quality operating system.
Bob: I agree (though only after he fixes his mind bending bug)
Bob later recieves a raise, is still programming while he is not irc'ing
"illegal user entry crashed a web-store" is a serious issue. Unfortunately, bringing the website down doesn't mean that the OS went down. The web-server may have crashed, the OS probably went on functioning. That's two different things.
That the migration costs from Linux are not large.
This means that investing in Linux does not paint you into a corner and lock you into a single vendor. It's not a big deal to go Windows if you think it might work better for you.
That's an advantage of using Linux.
Now go ask your friends with significant investment in Windows whether they could migrate to any alternative for a reasonable cost.
Even just a small standardized piece of that infrastructure, perhaps?
Oh, it's all together and hard to separate out into standard components without breaking some other thing?
P.S. Note that Oracle is not the only SQL option on Linux.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
that maybe there was a little more behind the switch. i think down south i think they call it the mordido. in the middle east, it's called bakshish. here, we just call it kickbacks.
look, i see all kinds of shit in my school district. our technidiots go to seminars and get all kinds of crap thrown their way. one example: i'm surfing the web in my classroom from my linux laptop, and finishing up my grades running sasiXP under wine. tech guy drops by and asks how as "novell doesn't support linux" (this was a few years ago.) it's called IP protocol for the internet. and this guy was the tech admin for our entire school, some 300-400 clients. how much do you think microsoft is willing to give away to get some switchers? i bet alot. do i have proof? no. i just see all kinds of crap in my district. the guys there are walking FUD machines. i even got a nasty email saying how i needed to be careful because i might spread viruses or open up holes for hackers. that's what you're dealing with.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I'm not a big fan of mySQL at all, but I do wonder what a small shop was doing that they needed Oracle or SQL Server that PostGre or Sybase couldn't handle. If I had to take a guess, they were small enough that they didn't want to pony up for a real dba. If that's the case, that does give some value to SQL Server which can basically run at 75% potential with a respectable disaster recovery plan on a very part time admin unless you're replicating.
At the end of the day, if all your business needs a group of three to five developers hacking out new features on your web application quickly, its hard to not pay attention to Microsoft programs like Empower ISV, which gives you two copies of Windows Server, an Enterprise liscense of SQL Server, 5 copies of XP, Office and Visual Studio, Win2k3 Small Business Edition (Active Directory and Exchange), and a year of MSDN Universal (basically all the upgrades and free software a small business can dream of) for $375. When you consider that one of your developers can spend 10% of his time being the admin for the rest of the IT infrastructure, I'd find it nigh-impossible to talk a business owner out of a situation like that from a cost perspective. If they accept that they're locking themselves into the Windows Server world once they start expanding, no argument you throw at them is going to change their mind.
Microsoft's ability to target the very small companies that want a limitted technology presense is absolutely amazing and I think in general, the Open Source movement does a poor job at targetting these types of businesses.
I switched my company over from Win2k Server's to Linux and everything's worked ever since. Yes, there were things that I didn't know. Yes, there were snags, but I am of the mind that "if I don't know it, someone else might, so I'll ask for help" Come on! Google, Linuxquestions.org, these 2 sites have made my transition, although rocky at times, much easier. Linux just works. I don't have virus' running rampant through my servers, I don't have crashes regularly, I don't have any of the problems normally associated with Windows. I've got so many examples of how Linux has worked better then expected, it's not even funny. I think you are all right though, the problem doesn't sound like a Linux issue, it sounds like a personnel issue.
I hold the Linux Professional Institute Certification Level 2, and I passed the combined exam while it was in beta. I also hold other certifications as well (MCSA, MCSE, Inet+, A+, Network+, and Server+).
;-)
As a Linux-centric consultant, here is what I have to say about the questions people talk about:
1) Which distro to learn on? Doesn't matter. But learn how to read configuration files and use command line utilities. This is more important than what distro. Also learn about the boot sequence and learn how to configure both LILO and GRUB.
2) How much learning is enough? You will NEVER know everything you need to know to impliment Linux solutions which stretch your knowledge. However, you need to know the fundamentals of networking, security, and other basic cross-platform topics. You also need to be comfortable *in the Linux world* to understand how to put together a solution which will meet an arbitrary set of needs. Finally you need to know where to go to get documentation. Beyond that, you can learn as you go.
Also best IT practices in general are a good thing to know. Beyond that you can read up on documentation and play with programs. This is where OSS kicks the competition out
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
No Java runs 10X slower than C. Perl only runs 8X slower.
Wow. Great sleuthing.
It looks like Eweek was approached by this Martin Taylor character and they were happy to print whatever was forwarded.
whois eweek.com
Registrant: Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings, Inc.
Ah. Could've known...
I was hoping to hear some interesting counterarguments to the trend from Linux to Windows. Instead the article contains only a couple anecdotal examples with no logic to support the conclusions.
The first company had been using a Linux-based ISP for 9 years, but the ISP was badly managed, which is somehow the fault of Linux, so they decided to switch to Windows. Two years ago they rehosted their stuff under Windows Server 2003 (hmm...), and have never had an outage since. They had also been upset that the original ISP only offered Oracle for a database, which again was somehow the fault of Linux.
The other example is just as spurious. A resort company has a badly written e-commerce package, which failed in the middle of a big sale due to a bug in the transaction code. So, they ditched Linux for Windows. The owner also "had doubts about the security ... of the system [under Linux]" but these are never elaborated upon futher, nor is his reaction to the slew of recent Windows security vulnerabilities covered.
So, Company A has a badly managed ISP and changes providers, and Company B rewrites a buggy e-commerce package which they rewrite. Linux is blamed for the original shortcomings, and the use of Windows after correcting the root problem is credited with solving everything.
OK so you needed an enterprise DB 2 years ago Oracle was one of your only option, but the ski resort and php / MySQL that is a prob with the developer not Linux or linux support. there are and have been quite a few PHP / *SQL products available with an open-source license that just need a bit of tweeking to make your own and most of them work well and have some sort of on-line payment system built right in.
IMHO the ski resort tossed the baby with the bath water and are blaming compleat incompetence on behalf of the developer on linux.
Or this whole thing is a farce all brewed up by M$ to add a bit of FUD back into the Linux market which has been enjoying a lull in the amount of bad mouthing it receives from media. We all know that E-week, CRM, and many other Magazines that ship more free copy's than paid subscriptions are really just sluts willing to publish opinions of the highest bidders.
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I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
...the condescending attitude newbies often face from some Linux zealots doesn't help the situation either. Not everyone looks forward to joining an exclusive club that accepts such members. I'm not surprised that the number of skilled Linux administrators is dwindling. Where is the motivation? Reading articles like this brings a queasy feeling on. Has the Linux community become complacent or even worse a little over-confident?
I am porting our C++ apps to QBasic..... And our PHP apps to 8086 Assembly....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Quote:
"Three years ago, the resort implemented an e-commerce system that used Red Hat Inc. Linux, The Apache Software Foundation's Apache Web servers and MySQL AB's MySQL database; the system was programmed in PHP."
First mistake: Using PHP and MySQL for an enterprise class application.
Quote:
"There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said. "When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges."
Second mistake: Hiring a PHP script kiddie to write an enterprise application.
They could have used java/jboss/tomcat with a real database on Linux and still saved a ton of change and had a real enterprise solution.
Live and learn I guess....
If you're a company, your thinking usually involves having your ISV call and find out which commercial databases are available on Linux.
Most companies aren't going to want to trust their business to MySQL any more than they will want to trust Linux without a LOT of handholding first; if they have a problem they want a vendor they can call that has a 24 hour hotline, and that will get them back up to speed quickly (not to mention one that they can sue if things go horribly wrong and cost them money.)
Add the fact that their IT dept. probably has a bunch of MSCEs already who know how to click the right buttons to run their Windows boxes and the fact they don't want to hire someone who knows how to edit all those funny text files, and the "Windows is better!" argument can easily be made from their point of view...
OMG they're being funded by Microsoft!!!
It looks to me like the real problem these people had was a crappy ISP and a lack of Linux skills within their own organization. I also do not remember Oracle being available on Linux 9 years ago, so I have doubts about the accuracy of the entire article.
The Bolachek Journals
Didn't any one else notice this is an eWeek article. If it weren't for M$ FUD and such lovely non issues such as the "E Jihad" bull shit eWeekw would have nothing to print. Point is this is more or less a product of FUD and sensationalist crap. What I took away from this story was it's lack of depth. So some are foolish enough to switch back to windoze because they lack the personelle to properly impliment Linux, oh well. That's just a few less lusers do deal with. In that case I say, Good riddence, dont let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, chow, and buh bye. In the end it doesn't really make any difference and if it works for them then so be it.
This sort of thing doesn't surprise me at all; it's a normal part of the growth path for tech companies. At the beginning, you're swimming in techies and the company's choices reflect it. Since they have smart people but (usually) not a lot of cash, you choose products based on a combination of price and technical merit. Linux (or *BSD) on PCs usually works quite nicely. They develop innovative in-house solutions for the problems that they face. The company is successful because they're faster and more flexible and generally *smarter* then the competition.
The problem is that eventually the company will grow up. The smart people will leave for new startups, and the management will be replaced with bean-counters. The technical staff will become mostly middle-rung support people without a lot of design experience, and the cool, fast, cost-effective stuff that the founders build won't make any sense to the new folks. They won't know how to manage it, and the very concept doesn't fit into their mental model. If it breaks, who do they call for support?
At this point, the company no longer sees itself as "cutting edge" or even particularly high-tech. It sees itself as part of a stable industry and starts trying to look just like all of the other companies in the industry.
So what happens? They end up swapping all of those "hard to use" Linux systems for a big pile of Windows (or Sun, or maybe AIX) boxes, and they pay a fleet of consultants to keep things running. They pay Oracle or Peoplesoft or SAP or someone $5m for software to manage their business, and then they spend another $15m on hardware and consultants to get it up and running. And, generally, it takes them years to actually get it to work as well as the home-grown stuff that it replaced. But hey, they have someone to yell at, so they're happy.
It doesn't always go like this, but I've seen enough of it.
So, don't take Linux to Windows migrations as any sort of statement about Linux. Read them as a statement about the company doing the transition, and how they view their relationship with technology.
Here is an email I sent to the author discussing the article:
Your article in eWeek about migration from Linux to Windows was very interesting. As someone in the technology field, I pay pretty close attention to the ebb and flow of Linux enthusiast and Microsoft supporters. I think the topic of people trying Linux and switching back to Windows is something that you don't hear about very often. Personally, I use Windows XP and Mac OS X at home. I have also dabbled in Linux on my home systems, but it has never found a permanent place on one of my boxes. As someone who has tryed the various systems (and I've even developed in PHP and MySQL) I find it odd that people switched for the reasons mentioned in your article. For instance, the ski resort that experience outages due to high demand -- their problems seem to be the result of bugs in their code and not something resulting from the use of open source software. I can't see why a user going over an order limit would cause PHP script to crash. Also, if this limit was so important, the fact that it wasn't checked before the order was processed also seems to be an oversight. One customer also mentions growth after switching back to Windows that would not have otherwise been possible. I think views like these seem very narrow. Certainly, anything that you can create on a Windows platform could be created using Linux.
SIGFAULT
If people go in, guns blazing, looking for a cheap buck and not considering the issues, then yes, they will get burned, and go crying back to Microsoft.
... the ones who told you they could program and then produced this sort of crap.
In one of the examples, they said that the system was brought down because there was a hard-coded limit on the number of purchases you could make in 1 transaction. I fail to see what this has to do with Linux. I would be blaming the idiots who designed the site this way
It's unfortunate that these idiots' stories will be the ones picked up my Microsoft & Sun in their battle against Linux. Hopefully the rest of the world have the sense to spot the fools amongst the professionals.
... for complaining about missing options for this Poll, because the article title could have been a good choice for it.
It's pretty obvious that these companies leapt blindly with both feet directly into a chasm they knew nothing about. Yeah, that was stupid...
It would also seem natural that said CIOs and equivalents would need something/someone to blame. Hell, they want to keep their jobs right? What a more handy scapegoat than the new kid on the enterprise block?
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
If you want to talk laptops: it takes at least three pieces of proprietary software (windows, pgp, bestcrypt) to put together a reasonably secure laptop, and it takes several hours to install all this. I can put mandrake on a laptop, configure the (encrypted) user and data partitions from single user mode, and have it all working before you can even get through the windows installer.
Vendor support means little - once you have it working, it works. Doesn't matter where those drivers come from, what matters is the system is robust and easily serviced WITHOUT having to return it to the vendor.
I cannot tell you how many people I've talked with who, at some point in their past, had been on the phone with Microsoft support for HOURS working to undo damage caused by that system's vulnerabilities. The funny thing is these folks have always said how great MS tech support was because they "stayed with them." They had them doing all this geeky command line shit for three or four hours when they MORE easily could have just reinstalled XP to another folder, run a virus cleaner, then reinstalled again. But no... keep them busy, spin a bunch of bullshit and make it look really, really hard, recite enough incantations, and these simple-minded dolts will believe you're the god of hellfire.
yeah paying someone to maintain it.
Linux distributions needs to add a bit better hardware support. Plus the fonts in Linux look terrible compared to Windows. Other than that it's a cool little operating system.
As much as it's utterly expected for a Slashdotter to confidently claim that any pro-MS/Anti-*nix story is automatically lies and FUD, but there are a couple of things that did catch my eye in this story.
Firstly, I find it hard to believe that a Windows server system is that much more stable than a *nix server... or was the Windows server kept responsive by the monthly reboots to apply Windows security patches? (I administer Win2k3 Server boxes in work, I know whereof I speak) Proper outages may have happened more often (although I'm not sure how) but that doesn't count the amount of times servers would be restarted.
Secondly though, a company proudly announcing that they have lowered their "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) always rings alarm bells with me. As everyone knows, that's the big thing MS are trying to push in their latest FUD atm; Linux may be free, but the TCO is higher. Saying that you have a lower TCO when you switched to Windows makes you sound like a Microsoft poster child, imo.
Okay, you can be concerned with the security of *any* system, and you could also take the opinion (as some studies suggest) that Linux and Windows are relatively similar in the amount of vulnerabilities/patches released (not my belief, but it's been suggested), but I have not heard of any cases beyond the Microsoft FUD machine where anyone has been concerned with the security of a Linux system and has moved to Windows as a result... again, just sounds like a Microsoft poster child to me.
The ultimate horror story that no manager wants to hear... the program crashed, and lots of time and effort was spent fixing it! omg! But then again, that sounds to me like it's a problem with the program they're using, not the operating system. If they were to switch to Windows, and use the same software (assuming it had a port) there's no guarantee that the exact same thing wouldn't happen. This again, imo, is simply FUD.
This could be a valid arguement in itself; if you do not have the skills in your company to deal with a Linux system (having previously overloaded your IT base with MCSE's :p) then you might have a lot of issues trying to administer the system internally. This, as other people have said, is a problem with manpower, not with the operating system itself.
However, it goes on to say:
Perhaps they were not able to implement it, but I would have a hard time believing that Linux would be unable to handle what was previously stated as a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) system.
Once again, no details are specified, simply a sweeping statement which heralds Windows as the solution to all IT problems.
Linux is not flawless, nor is Linux for everyone. I can imagine that some companies would rather stick with Windows than Linux, and I can also believe that companies might want to switch back when they discovered that Linux
Their ISP ran Linux/Oracle 9 years ago. That's 1995.
I recall that Oracle's announcements in 1998 about Linux.
If that article is accurate, it seems the company has a history of beta roll-outs for production systems.
Not the most impressive journalism.
Full disclosure: I work for one of eWeek's competitors. Still, though I have no reason to defend them, I feel like there wasn't much harm in running this story. They were obviously approached by somebody working for some PR agency who put together these "case studies" for them, and they decided they had enough material to package a little story. I don't see this as being any kind of official statement from eWeek: "Linux bad, Microsoft good." They just found an angle and went with it.
In truth, any kind of meaningful Windows/Linux case studies are hard to come by. I know, because I've tried to find them. You all probably already know the names of all the organizations that have done switch-overs to Linux. And I say "organizations," because a lot of those are in the public sector. Novell can rattle off numbers and shoot you out press releases on all kinds of companies that have "decided to" switch to Linux, but the proof's in the pudding, and I don't smell no pudding.
Likewise, even if this story about switching from Linux to Windows was completely unbiased, it would be an anomaly ... two companies, totally specific circumstances, almost meaningless. It serves to illustrate a certain angle on the industry and stimulate discussion. Nobody's story of the year, but I don't think it's a particular low point, either.
Breakfast served all day!
Sorry, but if you think that Linux is the Ford, and MS is the Toyota, then you either know little about operating systems or know little about vehicles
Those gnaa posts and the website are too stupid to be offensive to anyone. Except maybe competent trolls and web designers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Why don't you guys just tell them what you think
about it on their forums.
http://forum.mthigh.com/
Got Code?
(Foreward: I agree about MySQL being a tad hobbiest, lacking recursive SQL in all its forms. I must pooh-pooh Postgres for having unacceptable "tablespace" limits [one database == one directory, so adding storage for large tables is "problematic"]. These opinions may be slightly out of date, or not, but they were definately germane to the timeframes from the cases mentioned in the article. Meanwhile, M$ SQL Server has some serious tablespace issues itself. To a great extent, if you want to go large, Oracle is the only choice on *BOTH* platforms... IMHO of course 8-)
The position (which I do not support) was not centered around "Requiring Oracle", it was "Requiring Choices Other Than Oracle" that "required" Windows. That is, the position is basically "Linux only provides Oracle so it is inferior to Windows which allows other choices."
It is a specious argument once put to forward translation, because there were other choices for both platforms.
This speciousness is endemic to the reasoning presented in the article. The switchers in question weren't driven from Linux to Windows so much as they forced themselves to flee from Linux to Windows by way of poor project vision/planing/execution/expectation.
So the complaints of the posters in this thread are that the article was weak and stupid because the users failures can be traced directly to the failure of the users to plan ahead or research options.
These complaints themselves are, in turn, based on a lack of information, as we don't know how much white-wash has been applied, and how much has been rinsed away in a flood of hyperbole, to the various positions presented by the lay-reporter. We really don't know What Really Happened(tm).
The reporting leaves us needing to take inference and forensic deconstruction as our clues to What Really Happened(tm) which is the hallmark of the very top-shelf FUD. The educated see the errors in judgement and the PHBs see the fear and failure, so the article is a masterful tool for preventing action on any kind of Linux agenda. It is fodder for anyone who has made a carrier of gain-saying everybody else's actions. (You know, the prophet of doom who gets to say "look, I was right" whenever anything fails, but never puts forward a solution themselves.) The very fact that the article confused you and the other conferees here with its passive-speak indictments is testament to its artful composition as FUD.
This is a fluff piece with the Shakespearian dollops of Sound and Furry being provided by all maner of diverse parties.
The article is about people who failed to implement some Linux solutions, for whatever reasons, and then switched back to "good old safe Windows".
It is, in fact, advertainment and propagandimonium most foul. 8-)
So point at the monkey in his leiderhosen and laugh as you see fit. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Isn't that fixed in the 2.6 kernel?
How many positions on opperating systems have they had? First they're for the Linux... then they're against it. They try to explain their position with double-speak talking about hundreds of different types of distributions. How can they expect to lead the business world when they do nothing but Flip Flop?
If this company is not for Linux freedom, this company is an enemy of Linux freedom. There are squads of vicious microsoft sales reps that want this company to succeed, and we must not let that happen.
We are forging a new world where all people of can benefit from the freedoms of Linux. Linux is turning the corner... We cannot let this small band of Microsoft thugs repress these companies any longer.
To blog is sublime
After reading this article, I and nobody else, should think any less of a Linux-based solution than they did before reading it. The only thing I thought after reading this article was how much of joke these examples are! In fact, these examples portray bad decisions on the company's ends.
First off, to blame incompatibilities, lack of SQL server options, and poor performance **AFTER** implementation is just ludicris! Those possibilities, issues, etc. could have been worked out before even thinking of installing a total Linux solution and to blame them on Linux is just taking the blame off of who really deserves it.
The eCommerce site that crashed and burned?? Once again, the company is putting blame for thier poor decisions on another target. The downtime that they experienced is a reult of poor management within the ISP. And, a PHP site crashes because a value is too big? HaHaHa
[ insert signature here ]
As soon as I clicked "Read more," I knew it would be rife with justifications, denial, and spin!
Basically, any stories about Windows to Linux migrations are a-okay and 100% true. Any stories about Linux to Windows migrations are suddenly "vague," "don't give the whole story," and the reasons given "don't have to do with Linux at all."
And this is coming from someone running Gentoo on their laptop.
If you check when they first set this up, they said about 9 years ago. So that means it's in the 1995 - 1996 time frame. If you go to MySQL's and PostgreSQL's web pages, you see that both weren't copyrighted untill 1995 (Mysql) and 1994 (Berkeley's Initial Copyright for Postges). Did they exist, yes. Would anyone in there right mind deploy them at the time for business applications. No. If you say yes, you're clearly looking at them with nine years of hind-sight and development. So at the time, the best option was Oracle. Why they didn't upgrade or design it in a better way, well, I can't answer that.
Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
We simply have to switch back to our "troublefree (TM), totally compatible(TM) with any application (could not run those dialers, trojan.W32.keyloggers and VBS.XYZ.W32.AX under leenuks), hi performance (if you add enough hardware), no support needed (really, we have 5 MCSEs on our payroll to prove it), mature ecosystem
We were unable to type "list of linux databases" into the google prompt, because
What's that smell ? Did i step into a pile of marketing bullshit ?
Did i already mention the missing project plan?
Our bad application design (Did i already mention the missing project plan?) did lead to downtime in our e-commerce system, so we blamed it on Linux to avoid getting fired.
---
"The Internet? We are not interested in it"
-- Bill Gates, 1993
"Like a lot of products that are free, you get a loyal following even though it's small. I've never had a customer mention Linux to me."
-- Bill Gates, 1998.
"Open Source Kills Jobs"
-- Bill Gates, 2004
I respect the decision of the two companies (not several as claimed by the submitting astroturfer) to switch back to windows, but there are some huge flaws in both decisions that make me wonder wehther this is not some piece of MS funded anti-Linus FUD.
Firstly, the first company, in NY, claimed, that they switched to Linux and Orcale nine years ago. I'm not sure about the timing but Orcale had, AFAIK, no Linux offerings that long ago. It's possible that the database backend came about when Orcale offered it's first Linux versions back in 2000, around 4 years ago.
If the guy was worried about the lack of Linux know-how in his company, why on earth did they even go for Linux that far back, in 1995, when Linux was nowhere near as stable and powerful as it is now? Why didn't the guy look for Linux expertise in the mean time. You cannot tell me, that by 2002, when they started their move back to Windows, that profeesional services, both for Linux (Red Hat, SuSE pro services) and Oracle (who by 2002 had moved their entire development over to Linux and for which there would have been mountains of support available). By 2002 there were multiple DB's available, MySQL had started becoming very powerful, PostgreSQL was there, and DB2 had been migrated by IBM which is no slouch when it comes to support and services.
To me it sounds like an extremely incompetent manager who went with the ASP hype in 1999 and 2000 only to get burned when it collapsed, instead of recognising, as he should have and as a competent manager would have, that the ASP model involves big risks. Why on earth didn't he just look for another one with better financials (did he even bother to look how well the ASP was doing?)
Pathetic.
Secondly, in the case of the second company, it sounds similar or even worse. The fact that their system (inhouse aparently) had major design issues. "Not designed to support x transactions per second in the programme" sounds suspiciously like a scalability problem that could have been either fixed by a reasonable programmer, or by a distributed system.
His concerns about security is pure and utter FUD given that 2002 was the year of Nimda and Code Red. The fact that the system went down for a day points to slackers not taking into account failover solutions or backup systems.
None of these desicisions say anything about Linux, but they do say a lot about the incompetence of managers and the willingness of certain so called IT news outlets to act as paid mouthpieces for a company in Redmond.
This article is like those late night info-mercials trying to sell some stupid product. They show a person who just can't operate an everyday tools. Maybe its a spoon they are having trouble with. Also theres the typical voice over "do you have trouble with spoons, can you just not work them, well now theres the mpoon!" And theres a totally useless product that solves the problem of the user's intelligance.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Ah ha, but there are even more of these types attracted to the click and drool ease of Winblows. The difference between the two? The Linux outfit learns things when things go wrong and can avoid it in the future. They might even fix the application. With some effort, they become experts. The Winblows fraud, on the other hand, has only GUI check boxes and registry hacks to work with. These things teach them nothing and they remain frauds.
Even the best run Winblows sites are slow, buggy and crash prone. Steve Baller brags about "insane" 30 day uptimes for 2003. The insane part might be true but anyone can get a 100 day uptime with any stable Linux distro. The hotmail switch out to M$'s own "dog food" epitomizes how difficult, stupid and wastefull such a migration is. The claim to two years without downtime with Server 2003, released this year, is self evidently a lie and the whole article is nonsense.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Linux is may be a way for Redmond to complete the world domination. Begin with a company with Sun or AIX switch to Linux find a lot of problem... don't want to go back... switch to Windows.
The article isn't worth much.
The first case is one in which a company was using an ISP who ran Linux and they had reservations about that. When the company went belly up, of course it was Linux which had a black eye.
The second case involves an application (apparently poorly written) in PHP which was unreliable. Again equating a bonehead test within their PHP web application which caused their site to crash, with Linux being bad basically makes it more understandable why they had a bonehead test in their web application which caused their web application to crash (it was hosted on Linux of course).
Synopsis:
Bad ISP + Bad Web application = Bad Linux
Or more precisely:
Garbage in/Garbage out
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I hope the Software Publishers Association is reading this article... this brings up a great new tactic for them to identify places to raid.
Any company that moves from Linux to Windows, or claims Windows has a lower TCO needs to be raided because you sure as hell know half the stuff they're running is unlicensed.
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The problem here is one of marketing... It doesn't matter whether or not there a millions of DB solutions for Linux. Unless someone is actively marketing to the people picking the solution, the perception is that only Oracle (or what have you) is the only thing out there. When's the last time you've seen a PostGre advertisement in a trade magazine? (Not that *real* developers hold much weight in those magazines, but the ID10Ts who make decisions often do only read them.
Linux, in order to be successful, needs to have the whole Linux *solution* marketed, not just the OS. Many people donate thousands of hours to Linux and Open Source / Free Software. How about donating some money for a marketing firm?
These moron MBAs should've gone to OS X if they were having this many problems.
God damn.
I think that the article has been pretty much dissected and the motives, MS FUD, inaccuracies ...etc. exposed enough in the above comments.
Some points that have not been mentioned:
As good as Linux is, as cost effective it is, it may not be the best fit for every single situation out there. Some may have a large pool of experienced Windows developers and admins. Some may have a good site license deal. Some may have other reasons. There will always be exceptions to the rule, no matter how general the rule is.
The original article is so full of anecdotes, but it does not say anywhere what percentile this represents of IT spending this year, nor of those who switched operating systems. One can always list exceptions to gain the sound bite effect, but do not take your audience as complete idiots when doing so.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Ok, so the story's talking about a switch that happened 2+ years ago. Fine, Linux has made a few markable improvements in that time. HOWEVER, if you look at the site, it's REALLY basic. I ran this kinda thing on 486s, within the past 2 years no less. (Obligatory "try to run 2003 server on a 486" comment) The biggest problem this company seemed to have is 1) having a lousy site designer/coder, and 2) having a really small/poor(incompitent?) ISP. So OBVIOUSLY linux sucks.
On the flip side, Oracle can be pretty pricey, especially if you are talked into purchasing a larger package than you need. Perhaps that's where the percieved TCO comes from. The spokes person(s) are obviously not particularly savvy.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Do Linux geeks take this to seriously and too heart? It seems, and it was predictable, that Linux geeks where going to come out firing at this. But why? Who cares if someone is using Windows over Linux.
;) Although i did find the similarities kind of amusing.
I'd be the first to say that all their claims are right, but then again, these claims may be coming from someone who hasn't bothered to learn how their system works, which is the true beauty of Linux.
This reminds me of the Darwin Awards, where one silly and stupid individual gets an award for killing him/herself in the most dumb and stupid way. The idea is that they are performing a cleansing of the human gene pool by eradicating themselves.
Isn't this kinda of similar? The Linux community has one less organisation that doesn't know what its doing when it comes to using Linux. They may not have even been contributing anything towards the community anyway, so why do we need them? This could be the attitude of many Linux geeks, luckily, its not my opinion
But back on topic, don't take it seriously Linux geeks. Calm down, or take a caffeine hit, whatever works for you.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
the goal of a business is to make money. if they don't have the expertise to do the job right and something else provides that capability, then by all means use that technology.
would it be cheaper in the long run to hire 2 guys who know their shit? yeah sure, but obviously the companies can't and don't know how to hire good developers. You can't solve an management hierarchy problem by demanding linux. the only thing that does is it makes linux look bad and pro linux people fanatic. Instead, let the company compete against tech savy companies and get their butts kicked.
The market will show what works and what doesn't.
Do Linux geeks take this to seriously and too heart? It seems, and it was predictable, that Linux geeks where going to come out firing at this. But why? Who cares if someone is using Windows over Linux.
It's not about Linux vs Windows. It's about truth vs propaganda.
This is an important story because you have a very big publishing company that is repackaging completely erroneous FUD as "news". This trend keeps continuing, in part due to people like you who seem to have this, "who cares?" attitude instead of challenging journalists to be responsible.
This article is analagous to someone hiring a crappy mechanic who can't fix their car and charges them too much, and blaming it on the brand of vehicle. It's completely misleading and inappropriate.
I recently turned down a job where the client wanted me to develop a Linux-based solution for them, but I actually recommended an all-Windows sytem because they were an all-Microsoft shop running SQL server and it seemed like the best choice for them. There are scenarios where one might choose Microsoft over Linux, but the ones outlined in the article are completely misleading and false in the claims and rationality employed.
Likewise, I've developed Linux-based e-commerce systems that have been in continuous operation for almost ten years, handling tens of millions of dollars in transactions for sites exponentially larger than the two lame companies cited in the story. The story implies that Linux can't handle even modest capabilities in this area. That's a total lie.
I find it offensive that they had the ignorance and audacity to blame their mess on the operating platform when it was obviously a crappy developer/contractor.
And I'd bet the real story is, some mid-level-manager boneheads in both companies came up with the idea to blame the OS to save their own jobs.
This kind of BS promotes the idea that the talent is secondary to the tools, which no self-respecting tech person would agree with.
If you don't challenge ridiculous crap like this, it starts to grow larger than life and you become part of the problem, rather than the solution.
I didn't know that Dan Rather worked for e-week now.
I bet we get the REAL story in a few days from someone other than the PHB that made this decision.
Your Systems Administrator.
Whether you have a Win32/64, Linux, Unix, Apple, or mixed enviroment, you won't get far if you don't have a capable Administrator who can tie it together, keep up with patches, and lock down vulnerabilities.
In other words, people are still your greatest resource.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
their ISP went out of business and the one that they teamed up with that got them to "switch" has managed to gain ZERO additional clients since. Again Source Netcraft.
So would it be fair to say that Netcraft confirms: their ISP is dying? ;)
i use what works for the situation. at work it is win2k. at home it is either mandrake or os x. the OS is just a portion of the whole tool. i think people forget this all too often...
These two cases are well documented at microsoft.com.
s p?CaseStudyID=15390
s /casestudies/casestudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=15188
http://www.microsoft.com/spain/hechos/casestudy.a
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/fact
The articles are somehow the product of martin taylor. This is the guy that was assigned to make windows appear a better option than linux. His job is to make windows look less expensive both up front and with the 'TCO.'
Just go to news.google.com and paste in Martin Taylor. Look at his job when he moved up at MSFT.
There should be no doubt that anyone talking to Martin Taylor is being fed the spin and probably the 'facts' as has been shown over and over in TCO and performance 'studies.'
For a balanced article there is not very much balance. I take it they didnt bother to say redhat or novell or ibm or oracle didnt reply to their questions because... oh I don't know.. This was being stuffed down their throats by Martin Taylor and they never bothered to pick up the phone and call to ask?
Do Linux users switch to windows now and then? Sure - thats what competition is about. Was this article balanced? No - this was a Martin Taylor feed.
Remember that name and these articletisments become easier to spot.
Scalability and reliability are not *necessarily* related to one another -- my pickup truck is very reliable, but if the object is to haul 40 ton loads, well, that pickup truck doesn't scale worth a damn. :)
:)
IOW, your point would have been better said as "use the right tool for the job." I remember Hotmail as it was on BSD, and yeah, it was just plain knotheaded of M$ to force their own dog food on an application it wasn't designed to handle. They should have used the right tool for the job, and if that wasn't Win2K, tough shit for the marketing dept. As it is, yeah, it demonstrates that Win2K can do the job -- if you've got all day to wait for it. Not exactly the impression they intended to give!
Just last night I happened across a site that acted like it was being served off some rickety old 386 on dialup. Being curious, I looked up the host on Netcraft, and was amazed to see it was running on linux/apache on a commercial host. If I were to take that one example as the rule, I'd conclude that linux/apache were slow as molasses. But since I know better, I have to presume that this host is simply overloaded. (Funny thing, this outfit's home server, running on BSD, is swift as can be. False advertising?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I bet the damn sysadmins they were having problems keeping the costs down with were a bunch of mcse's fresh outta community college, if you've got the good "brains" in your admin positions, linux is a nobrainer for cost. If you got morons constantly breaking things due to undereducation or ignorance, bad shit is going to happen.
all you idiots are missing the situation, and so has the poster.
if both isp's were running linux or windows it wouldn't have made any difference, one was poor service the other was better. the systems they were running had nil to do with this.
All you windows fan boys need to just live with the fact that linux is a free and more stable platform with a multitude of great apps to choose from.
DEAL WITH IT!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
All they are saying is that they used an incompetent ISP that ran Apache and Oracle and now they are using a more clued up ISP that uses IIS. I assume the bad ISP still exists and still runs Apache and Oracle for its other clients. How the hell is that a migration?
Oh well, what the hell...
The definintion of "properly deployed" is the part that gets me. Its vague and allows for too much interpretation.
;-) E.g.: "XYZ is a peaceful religion." "But Bob kills people in the name of religion XYZ!" "Ah, but he's not a true adherent of XYZ."
Does your OS fail?
Its not the fault of the OS, it just wasn't "properly deployed".
This is an excellent example of the No True Scotsman logical fallacy, frequently used by Linux zealots and other religious groups.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
...I can say this for sure: the ISP in question filed for bankruptcy in January 2001, and was left in its last two years with a skeleton staff (3-4 people) and no database alternatives other than Oracle. There were basically no developers and only one very tired and overworked sysadmin who was also in charge of a lot of other things that had nothing to do with system administration. From what I know, it's a miracle that Combe's sites even stayed commercially workable during the last two years they sat on Linux.
The reason that the article refers to how surprised the CIO was that things went so well initially is that this describes the time period prior to the company filing for bankruptcy.
FWIW, earlier database development (pre-bankruptcy) on the Combe sites done by the same ISP was done using the Empress RDBMS largely by other developers, and - from what I know - there were no issues back then!
You see, it all comes down to the people....
Buzzword overload!! Someone set us up the bomb!
Poor planning prevents proper performance. You didn't know you'd need a database? or an ISP? Just admit you're too lazy to support it. Some people should click and drool.
Microsoft can't legally require one OEM or client to pay more for a Windows app than they charge others, but they can and do give ad rebates to companies that 'play ball' with them. These rebates are, in effect, refunds to the OEMs/clients on what they paid for their OS/Apps, which is certainly not in the spirit of the 'settlement'.
I have no doubt that the DOG, judge, prosecutors and lawyers knew this evasion by Microsoft of the rules of the 'settlement' would take place. Tell me again what the "monitors" were supposed to be looking for?
Facet one. If this article wasn't paid by MSFT, these fellas will be back to Linux in another couple of years. It does appear that they have managerial problems. And if this is the case they'll have them regardless of the environment they run.
Facet two. There aren't that many truly proficient Linux admins and programmers. And I don't just mean the technical side, but that elusive "business" side as well. Willingness and capability to deliver solid results to the business, even if the stuff you have to work on isn't really sexy. There's certain lack of focus among free software developers. As soon as the itch becomes "not sexy enough to scratch" they move to something else, and you can't really blame them for this because they work free of charge. Heck, I myself have about a dozen half-baked projects which aren't open-source, but could have been easily productized if I were more focused.
Isn't this a bit like the stories Fox News reports about the Gay African-American Republicans* endorsing Bush? It's only interesting from a "man-bites-dog" perspective... the companies doing this have more money than sense.
SoupIsGood Food
( *They really exist. The Abraham Lincoln Log Cabin Republican Organization. This does not represent a groundswell of pro-bush support in the African-American Homosexual demographic... it's a bizzarre circus sideshow. Much like Linux-to-Windows migrations.)
Gotta wonder if these folks were using MS Math, like the kind that is used in so many independent studies.
Linux TCO = $5000
MS TCO = $50,000
Kickback from MS to write study: $100,000.
Summary: "Our company saved $45K by switching to MS!
Life Insurance in Canada
Off-topic, but... as a Linux lover who once upon a time drove M1A1 tanks for the US Army, I hate to think of smearing Linux that way. A better tank analogy would be the Israeli Merkava (nice innovative design) or better yet, the German Leopard II tank. We trained along the Germans with their Leopards, and they were so much better then our M1's, it was kind of .. demoralizing. Anyway, whenever I hear 'like an M1 tank' I think back to our fuel-gulping lemons.
Note how here what looks like ill-specified application software requirements are mingled with operating system criticism. If your application doesn't handle "layers of information" how you need it, don't blame the OS!
In addition, how can they know that Windows would have been different? (And if so, why haven't they chosen it in the first place?) They might all just be non-experts who blamed Linux for their project's failure.
Who owns that Website, anyway?
--
Try Nuggets , the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
I find it interesting that they list the added cost of troubleshooting as a reason for switching from Linux to Windows. It doesn't surprise me that switching from Linux to Windows will add to the cost of troubleshooting, because with Windows you don't have all the tools to find the cause of a problem like you would have with Linux. What I don't understand is, how can this added cost be an advantage?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Thanks for what is probably the most informative response in this whole thread. Nobody will mod it up so few people will see it, of course...
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR's and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123395&c id=10368904
Empress was used when things were going well: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123395&c id=10368904
I think you've just discovered the futility of car-based analogies. But somehow people, particularly Americans, seem addicted to them. Comparing intellectual property (eg an MP3 file) to an automobile is just stupid in so many ways, but you see it all the time.
Nevertheless.... you've missed the rather important point that the tank is free, the station wagon is not, making it worth considering at least.
Yes, such reasoning is a fallacy if applied without thought.
Once in a while, though, Bob really isn't a true adherent of XYZ. Bob and one of his friends might call Bob a vegetarian, but the rest of us watching him scarf down a BigMac would conclude otherwise.
As Linux server deployments become more widespread, there are going to be more and more system administrators and fly-by-night ISPs that will fall into a category we'll call "The Lowest 1% of Linux Providers".
Just like Windows admins, medical doctors, cable TV repairment, someone has to graduate at the bottom of their class and it's time we recognize that bottom of the barrel Linux admins can and will exist, too. Complaints about paper MCSE's and CCNA's can extend into the Linux world, too. We've grown beyond a small community of enlighted hackers on a mountaintop.
The bigger issue with the original story is that it is an anecdote, a sampling of a widely varying phenomena where induction of general principles from one point can lead to erroneous conclusions. Or not. We need lots of stories, randomly sampled. Being chosen as "newsworthy" suggests something less than random sampling, however.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
If someone says "at least 100 times a year", that's fair as it suggests a large number, where saying "125 times one year, 136 times the next" would be a bit pointless.
But saying "at least 2 or 3 times a year"... what? You stopped counting after that? You can't recall whether it was 2, 3 or maybe even 4 times a year?
That was some of the most insightful commentary I have ever seen. I currently work at a company that is exactly as described in your first paragraph. I was brought in to start the IT department. Actually, they had a Windows LAN guy already but one tech does not a department make. We are currently running a combination Windows and Linux in North America, Asia, and Europe. The innovative stuff runs on Linux, the desktops and some of the commodity services run on Windows. I could write a book about our ability to use open source to outmaneuver competitors. Some of them outspend us 20:1.
We are at that stage where I am about ready to move on other things and maybe take some of the smarter people with me. When that happens, I predict the bean counters will "add value" by dumbing down the IT dept so that the entry-level Windows people can have their day in the sun.
The odd part is that it's a perfect match -- the concepts that are beyond the abilities of entry-level staff are also beyond the bean counters. Outsourcing, offshoring, and "on-demand" services to the rescue!
I've worked in IT for 24 years. But, I can't say I've seen it all.
FWIW: in my experience, *NIX pros usually cost more, but you usually get more. *NIX people tend to be more "gear heads" they understanding networking, security, and computer technology, at a deeper level. *NIX people are usually comfortable on a command line (I know windows vets with 10+ years experience who are uncomfortable with *any* CLI). *NIX admins usually know at least a little about configuring routers, and writing scripts, and programming in C. *NIX admins can usually administrate windows systems, but windows only types are often lost on *NIX.
A lot of windows-only types got in during the late 90s as easy way to make a buck. They have no real love for the technology. *NIX types tend to be the "real geeks."
As I said, that's just from my experience, your milage may vary.
When that analogy was created, it worked. Not everybody were familiar with win95.
On the last point, yeasterday I tried to install a win system, in order to run MatLab for win, and it wouldn't boot, after installation, nobody could help me, I had to use my DOS mind and perform a SYS C:, and it worked. Plus, I had to search the house to find the license. WIn is easy only if you buy it preinstalled. And there are GNU/Linux preinstalled boxes to be bought, at least here in Uruguay.
Knoppix is insert-the-cd and play. If you like it, install it, it's a no brainer.
oh my god
I was interested to see how late/early oracle alligned with linux. This is what I found ~ 50 DEFINING MOMENTS: 30. Lining Up for Linux (October 1998)
So you sceticism is founded :) I've found references to oracle and linux back to about '96 but nothing to suggest mainstream usage.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup