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Open Source: Facts and Figures
Eloquence writes "Much of the debate about GNU/Linux and open source is dominated by rhetoric rather than facts. David Wheeler has just released a new version of his "paper" (which, at 440,000 characters, is more of an e-book now) 'Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!'. According to David, this paper 'examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, OSS/FS on the desktop, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions.' May come in handy when talking to your boss about Linux."
The problem that a paper like this might help solve is convincing others in a corporate/government environment that there are viable alternatives. Only a couple years ago a co-op student was considering writing his paper on Linux vs. Microsoft and wanted to know if he could ask me some questions (being the only Linux guy in the office). I gave him a lot of information and some links. When he presented the idea of the paper and his initial research, the dean laughed at him. The student was told that any competent 3rd or 4th year CS student should be able to crack a Linux box.
If this kind of attitude and mis conceptions exist in University CS departments, how do you expect our managers and directors to have a realistic view of Linux and OSS in general?
XP was workable; it didn't break any speed records, but it was OK to work with.
Debian was workable only after I kicked KDE off the hard drive and went for an slim X setup with Ion as window manager. With Ion it was working OK, as long as I refrained from using Qt and GTK applications at the same time. But then, I wouldn't want to force Ion on an inexperienced user.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Best guess I can make is that "usability" and "features" are too subjective to comment on. At least with the other categories, you can generate some hard numbers based on records and tests instead of opinions.
=Smidge=
As do I, although most of what I use is on Linux. That may be hard for Windows people to believe, but it is true. I fire up the Windows box when I want to render videos (tmpgenc) or burn DVDs. That is where the DVD burner is installed. (Although k3b is AWESOME). I wish that Irfanview was available on Linux, it just rocks. I haven't found anything I like as much on Linux.
As a wise man once said, can't we all just get along?
Well, that is the kicker. We should all just be able to get along, but then you get proprietary software companies (no names mentioned) that have a heavily vested interest in NOT getting along. The OSS community is more than willing to just get along, but all parties have to be willing.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Depends on what you install. I feel sorry for you if you install Linux on that and try to use KDE or Gnome. We couldn't even get Mandrake 9.2 to install on a machine with 64M because the installer crashed repeatedly. I've found that I need a machine with 256M to run KDE or Gnome at a non-frustrating speed for the GUI. I had a P3-450 w/ 384M for a while running Mandrake 9.2 w/ KDE and it was usable but not very fast. The same machine running Windows ran fine. I suspect that a bit of it was video card support though.
In any case, I've found that lately, most Linux distros (with GUI) to require the same or greater resources to have a similar experience to Windows (not waiting for redraws and such). This didn't used to be the case. 100% of my job is developing on Linux and has been for a year now and my Linux roots go back to pre-1.0 kernel days so I've played around with it a bit.
I'll openly admit I didn't RTEFA. Still, through "critical skim" (a frequent management trick), this doesn't seem to be very persuasive.
GNU/Linux is the #1 server OS on the public Internet (counting by domain name), according to a 1999 survey of primarily European and educational sites
Interesting -- using a survey prior to the release of Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 server as the basis for trends today. Reading the article critically (as the hypothetical "boss" would), those numbers aren't as significant as the state of the world today. I may be completely ignorant to research turnaround, but doesn't it seem more recent data would be more relevant?
Consider this one as well:
GNU/Linux is more reliable than Windows NT, according to a 10-month ZDnet experiment
How many companies today are deciding between Linux and Windows NT?
Clearly there are reasons today that companies / governments / users are seriously considering OSS. However, to try to convince through comparison with 5 year old OS is probably not very effective.