Microsoft Compares Windows And Linux

Halcyon-X writes "Microsoft is hosting a discussion on Windows and Linux between its two top Linux consultants. Martin Taylor and Bill Hilf talk about the various OSS licenses, focus on the open source development model, competing implementations of administration tools, TCO, and risk assessment. Also available in offline formats, doc (which looks fine in OpenOffice.org) and wma as well."

Comments

Same old, same old...

[FyRE666]

"...For example, one thing that normally comes up is that Microsoft is anti-open source, and they've used some of our activities as Microsoft versus open source. This is definitely not the case. Yes..."

And that's the point at which Martin Taylor (the MS talking head) confirmed that this discussion was yet another dull FUD exercise and I stopped reading. Seriously, this is getting very old now. They need some fresh new script-writers over at MS, otherwise they're in danger of losing even their most avid fans!

Re:Same old, same old...

[SQLz]

I don't think the community wants MS to open up the Windows source. Even MS said that doing so would be 'a threat to national security'. What we do want is for MS products to better interopate with open source.

Re:Same old, same old...

[FatherOfONe]

You Quote the article
"Martin for example quite rightly points out that IBM, Oracle etc. are not throwing their lot in selflessly and wholeheartedly with Linux, they're augmenting a customer solution with open source products where their own proprietary software is lacking (they need an OS stack on which to run websphere, for example)."

I would somewhat agree but the main point is that companies are now putting large resources behind open source/Linux. Compare this to three years ago. So yes IBM will probably not open source Websphere and Oracle will not opensource their DB, but the fact remains that both companies are now working to improve the kernel and other features of the OS. Also companies like Oracle will now FULLY support a system like RedHat ES running their DB. They will provide you the RPM's and everything. So if you are like say 99% of the mid size companies that run a pure DB server (nothing else special loaded on the server) this is a good thing.

You quote:
"Another point which isn't often raised and which Microsoft is hammering on is yes, their solutions are at times more expensive, but do they provide more value to the customer, and this is the point which is most often dismissed as FUD, although it's valid."

I call you out on this. We need to define value for the money. This is the ambiguous TCO that is talked about. I will gladly put Linux and open source products against most of Microsofts. But before we debate on that issue we need to define TCO. Also, I would like to add that I have been part of one of the worlds largest I.T./Microsoft only shops. I have also been in a pure Linux environment as well. I will say that both technologies have "issues", but if you want to talk about "value" and TCO I would love to debate you on it.

You quote:
"Objectively speaking (objectivity being in short supply in this environment) some Microsoft products do provide better value in terms of functionality. From my point of view, Server 2003 is an excellent turn-key workgroup server, Office 2003 is an excellent collaboration suite (spare me the Linux banter about samba and OpenOffice.org, it's not the same). Whereas for enterprise level services such as public web services, e-mail, border security, I'd place more value in UNIX-based systems."

I would agree that some of Microsofts products do provide some value. Would you agree that they also provide vendor lock in? That is something that needs to be looked at in TCO. You bash Samba and OpenOffice but I wonder how much you have used them. Microsoft talks a lot about listening to their customers and building software that adds value to them, but I argue that they provide software that tries to lock your company in to their technology, then they try to slowly up the amount you have to pay to Microsoft over time. They are little different than a drug dealer. Their core responsibility is to make as much money as possible all why claiming to add value.

The last core issue that Microsoft and most companies fail to see is that opensource is more about freedom and communication that anything else. Because of opensource software you currently have a 64bit operating system for AMD64, and companies like TIVO are free to "add value" to their customers without having to talk to potential competitors. Now cell phones are starting to standardize on opensource software. Why? Because there is significant value in it. What about the next great gadget out there? What OS do you think they will choose to run on it? Windows? What if Microsoft may become a competitor of theirs?

Another large issue that Microosft seems to fail to mention in the entire article is the enormous growth of Linux and opensource in such a small amount of time. To be honest though, by them "talking" about it, they must realize that they do not add as much value as people think and that far more developers are working on it than they mentioned...

We do agree that Microsoft does "add value", just that value comes at a c

Re:Same old, same old...

[stinky wizzleteats]

Objectively speaking (objectivity being in short supply in this environment)

Indeed so. I've recently completed an intensive 7 month research project in which I compared the performance of Windows 2000 and 2003 with Linux/Samba running on the same hardware. It was very interesting to see how empirical reality stacked up against commonly accepted wisdom on the comparisons between Linux and other solutions.

Commonly accepted wisdom reads very much like your post did - nebulous, dismissive, voice-of-reason style speak that derives an almost guaranteed collective harrumph from Slashdot moderators and the IT community at large. Office 2003 is a collaboration suite? WTF? It's not even intended to be used as a "collaboration suite". It's a desktop application suite, and a rather bad one at that (with the possible exception of Excel). Microsoft's collaboration suite is Exchange. The competing products are Notes and Groupwise. To make a claim regarding 2003 as a collaboration piece, much less a good one, is to ignore the well-known problems of version incompatibility between Office releases, document rot, and the ability to recover hidden information within documents, all of which directly controvene collaboration.

I performed thousands of tests and generated more raw test data than would fit on a DVD because my company needed to know the facts about server performance. I didn't trust what was being said on blogs and fora about the various products. I installed and tested numerous operating system/application configurations. My testing revealed that not only is Samba better, more stable, and faster than Windows file services on the exact same hardware, but Windows can't even remotely compete. Performance analysis baselines and processor utilization levels during testing weren't even comparable. There was no "voice of reason" about it - no comfortable anti-groupthink rhetorical position into which one could arrogantly recline and dispense half-truths and irrelevant tripe. There was only fact - hard cold reality. Sort of like how every major Internet virus disaster, spyware infestation, and countless other sorts of electronic calamity occurs as a direct result of using Microsoft software. You can't spin that. You can't moderate that. It simply, relentlessly, is.

Further standing in plain sight is the source code for Samba. Because we had access to the innards of the file server system, we could further optimize the already exemplary out of the box performance of the system and fine-tune it for our specific needs. We now have a file server system that could never be matched in performance or cost by a monolithic, proprietary solution that attempts to be all things to all people from its ignominious perch within a cardboard box.

So yeah, objectivity certainly seems to me to be in short supply. Luckily for me and my company, however, choice is not.

Alright... as you say

[savagedome]

From the article

We believe the way to integrate software, and the way to get software to work in a heterogeneous environment, is through promoting open standards

Does Microsoft Office ring any bell Mr. Bill Hilf?!
Put your actions where your mouth is and open up .doc

Decouple the OS from the apps?

[jacobcaz]

• So to give you an example, like I said I've run a lot of Linux shops in the past, I run a lot of commercial Linux here. If we have a particular problem in a certain piece of software, anything from let's say from a Kerberos library to Apache to Samba to any other application that might be on that distribution when we go through that chain of support with our commercial Linux distributor, there is a gap between what they're able to supply and what they have to go back to the open source community to get an answer for to get it resolved. In many cases the response is we need to stick with the version that's available at the time that we purchased that distribution, so for example if I'm running Apache 1.3 on my Red Hat Enterprise server, although I may want Apache 2.0 because it might have new features or it might have some new capabilities, I'm outside of my support model now with Red Hat. This is just an example.

Interesting he talks about this, but don't you usually have seperate support contracts for the OS and your core apps? I have a beast of a box that runs Windows 2000 Advanced Server but I'm free to run any RDBMS or web server I desire on it. I don't like IIS? Fine, I install WebLogic or WebSphere and I don't lose my support of the OS from Microsoft. I am currently running MSSQL Server 2000, but that could just as easily be Oracle 10g and I don't worry about support for either the app or the OS.

In fact I don't want to worry about whether my OS vendor will support my web suite - it should be decoupled so I can run the apps I need to run my business whether it's IIS 6.0, Apache 2.0 or WebLogic 6.1.

Re:Decouple the OS from the apps?

[FreeLinux]

Well, look at it from another angle. One that more closely parallels their example.

Suppose I am running Windows 2000 and it comes with IIS 5.0. I'm tired of all the security problems and it lacks a couple of new features that IIS 6.0 has and I really want. So I install IIS 6.0, from a Windows 2003 CD, onto my Windows 2000 system. Surprise, surprise, it doesn't work. There are all sorts of library issues and other problems.

So, I call Microsoft for support. Their support tells me that IIS 6.0 on Windows 2000 isn't supported. They say that I need to stay with IIS 5.0 or, better yet, upgrade everything to Windows 2003 which comes with IIS 6.0

How is this example any different than the one that they gave?

This says it all:

[rabbit78]

As General Manager of Platform Strategy, I'm responsible for ensuring that our customers understand the benefits of the Microsoft platform. I also spend a fair amount of time doing a level of comparative analysis, making sure our customers understand the differences between Microsoft and some of the key alternatives in the marketplace, specifically Linux and open-source alternatives. Today, Bill Hilf and I will be spending time talking about that. Welcome, Bill.

We both work for Microsoft...

[DarkRecluse]

But hey, we're just technologists talking about the best solutions for customer issues...we just happen to agree on everything and lead eachother from one issue to the next.

Discussion = earnest conversation.
Propaganda = The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
( ref. www.dictionary.com )

Don't complain, write a lucid response.

[Anonymous Coward]

The linux community needs to write a lucid response. Calling them names does not win the marketing battle.

Re:Fair and Balanced!

[Alan Cox]

I think you are being grossly unfair to Al-Jazeera

Re:They still don't get it.

[Quixote]

We believe the way to integrate software, and the way to get software to work in a heterogeneous environment, is through promoting open standards

Can somebody hit Bill with a clue-by-four and ask him about
1. Samba, and why the Samba project had to reverse-engineer everything?
2. Microsoft Office, and the hoops OpenOffice.org had to jump through to reverse-engineer their document storage format?
3. NTFS, and why Linux still can't support NTFS write natively (without using a MS DLL)?
4. All the hidden system calls that Microsoft uses internally, and which came up in the anti-trust case?

I can't understand how people like this guy Bill can look themselves in the mirror every morning. Lying pathetically to make a living is no living.