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EDS: Linux is Insecure, Unscalable
daria42 writes "Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."
... of losers to Linux. :-)
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No chance of any anti-linux bias from any of that lot, eh? :)
So.. it has come to this
In relation to the spirit of this article.
In an industry where companies distort facts, thwart community efforts, it can be hard to know who to trust and what to believe. I think it is times like these when we the Open Source/Linux community can compare itself most closely with other changes and booms in society's history.
Think of all the doomsayers who like to say "The sky is falling" around times of economic uncertainty and social change. In the end, the ones who take the risks during those times, usually come out ahead.
I consider the Open Source community to be the "risk takers" per say of our time. I don't think that we'll end up on the wrong side of the fence when all is said and done. But if we do, so be it! At least we tried to make something better of the world. Something that gives rather than takes.
I don't think we should spend so much time reading articles like this that give us the attitude that the sky is falling. We should spend more time celebrating Linux and Open Source and leading the way to what will come next. We need to be leaders not Doomsayers.
If you want to read a good article on why open source is the right way to do things, read this Peruvian Congressman's letter to the manager of Microsoft in Peru. Really great read.
Interesting how all of them just might have a teensy > agenda of their own which is threatened by Linux in its ascendancy, huh?
Yawn.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Why do people mention forking as a problem? If a new version forks off and you don't like it, just don't use it! Why is this a bad thing?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
I think this is a fair summary. But really, Microsoft, I see you listed. Is Windows more secure? Is Windows more scalable? I mean, they know as well as we do about the possibilities of it splitting into multiple varieties, but aside from that...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If Microsoft were the subject of this, how soon would some sort of slander or liable lawsuit follow?
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
I would not consider someone who would refer to Linux as a language, as Mr. Rasmussen did, to be terribly knowledgeable about this things.
~*~ Tara
How long are we gonna let people say things like this before something happens? I'm sure the big corporate Linux distro's like Red Hat, Suse, etc. could possibly be losing a lot of money from these sort of lies. How come none of them are stepping up and putting in a lawsuit or two? Does the entire Linux community need to start taking up donations to defend itself through advertising (something like a SpreadFirefox.com)?
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment.
I think that pretty much says it all. This is a quote from one of the people we're to take advice from...
The article, or at least the people putting forth their thesis (I call bullhockey, it's really more of an agenda) do much to discredit themselves with claims such as:
I don't know exactly what they mean by "splintered", but working in the Unix field now for twenty-plus years, I never experienced:
I don't find or see anything enlightening or new in the article, and walk away shaking my head when these kinds of observations get any press at all.
Unlike Windows wich is secure (XP SP1 box is compromised in 18 min when online), scalable (try running ANY version of windows on more then 2 processors), and has never been forked into multiple flavors (NT, 95/98, ME, XP Home/Pro/Corp).
Yawn..
Not scalable, my ass.
-HJ
( No, my ass is not scalable either. :p )
Agile for dinosaurs, I guess.
EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, and EMC are not names I associate with agility. It would be like IBM, Exxon-Mobile, GE, and Wal-Mart getting together and calling themselves the "Lightweight League of Business".
That is all.
for doing an extremly lack luster job right? The same EDS that I have had to waste time after time dealing with their 'enterprise' people that have no idea how computers work right? Sheesh Id sooner take advice from Unisys.
I doubt all of the members actually agree on this. Oracle has been pimping their stuff on Linux pretty hard lately, and Linux is what they actually do their development on now.
Cisco has been using linux in several of their products, including the cache engine card that fits in 2600/3600 routers, the WLSE, the Airespace stuff they just bought, and a bunch of other stuff.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I'm not against a study finding faults with Linux. But when you see something like "which includes IT heavyweights...Microsoft" it kind of makes it hard to take seriously.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Is this the general opinion of the Alliance, or just the opinion of one clueless spokesperson?
Just do a search on EDS and "NMCI" - the Navy - Marine Corps Intranet. Fucked up (and is still fucking up) big on that.
This is hardly a unbiased group. They all are joining together to fight Linux. Not that they like each other. Solaris 10 have more functionality than Linux? That's a laugh. Why is Sun borrowing ideas from Open Source and Linux?
No chance of the reverse from this crowd?
Each claim should be evaluated regardless of messenger. If the claims don't make sense, there's no reason to immediately dismiss them because you know you're right. Instead, address them. Yes, there are cases where Linux is insecure and unscalable. There are cases where it is more secure and more scalable.
We should adopt more balanced opinions around here. Unfortunately, what will happen is that people will counter the article's reactionary opinion with an opposite reactionary opinion.
It's like hearing what the leader of China thinks about Democracy as a competing form of nation-state rule.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
This is just more proof that Linux has arrived on the scene as a real contender in the IT world. I remember when I first heard of Linux, there were literally daily changes being released for the kernel and things were seemingly in a constant state of flux. At the time I was using OS/2, but I was curious enough to keep an eye on Linux and where it was going. Years later, when it really mattered, the choice was simple, Linux. Why? I work in an environment where I'm an army of one and costs and security are very important. Windows just wasn't the best choice for what I needed to build and the budget I had. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought that way! So called studies that refute what frontline IT people see everyday in the field just prove the desperation of those threatened by Linux and the overall free open source movement. If they're smart, eventually they'll learn to live with and perhaps profit from it, but right now they seem more interested in stopping it through FUD and legislation.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
..that Linux is unscalable.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
This is slightly off-topic in that it doesn't have to do with the companies in the article, but I find it fascinating how quick Slashdotters are to point out bias in others while ignoring that Slashdot is owned by OSTG, who makes money off of Open Source products. It is therefore in their best interests to point articles negative toward competitors like Microsoft and get page hits through baiting people. Have you wondered if that's why we get so many crappy flamebait stories lately that are barely fact-checked?
I just wanted to point out how people are so quick to find bias in others while ignoring the corporate bias of the very website they're getting their daily news from. Slashdot is a corporate-owned entity. Rob Malda is an OSTG employee.
Was there a preliminary report to this one that studied how Linux affected/eroded their business models? Perhaps they saw that Linux provided a very powerful base for NEW technologies to leverage it as a great springboard for potentially competing products. This report didn't make it out, but now they are on this bandwagon.
Do they cite an alternative that is better? I guess since Windows XP supports two processors (wow) they must be. Microsoft is also renowned for security (e.g. IIS, IE, Word, Exchange) so this MUST be what they are getting at.
I have to add that this comes across as a bit of a surprise from an Oracle backed group after seeing 5 years of Oracle adds on the back of the Economist magazine:
"Unbreakable Linux"
"Powerful Linux" - ok I made that one up
"Unbeatable Linux" - and that one but you get the point
I guess now we can look forward to Oracle adds reading:
"Unscalable Lnx"
"Breakable Li n - u x"
"Beatable linux"
And in other news, IBM disagrees.
Hunger is the best sauce.
Apache is a fork from NCSA.
Firefox is a fork from Mozilla.
Cinepaint is a fork from Gimp.
What do these have in common?
They are all successful forks because they are all OSS and that they share code/ideas.
In contrast, the Unixes are good examples of code that started open, but was closed. Upon doing so, each fork of ideas,API was bad news. A better one is SMB. It was developed by IBM, IIRC. Yet, MS forked it and created network neighborhood. Doing samba and other apps to interoperate with it, is very difficult.
So no. Forking in OSS is not bad. Forking closed source, or forking and then closing it (as would happen with BSD) does cause problems
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Isn't this more or less precisely what the Linux community has been saying about Windows?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Google is small, they always get hacked and their search engine doesn't scale.
Google doesn't really use any of the scalability features in Linux. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to avoid them and instead rely almost entirely on in-house technology for scaling.
It's a bit like saying that florescent lights are scalable because you can put thousands of individual lights within a building, or that IBM laptops are scalable because you can purchase them in units of 1000 running MS Windows.
Rod Taylor
Rick Inatome (CompUSA founder) soundly lost a debate to a Honeywell and an IBM jurassic defenders I attended back in the 1980's at WSU with the conclusion being that microcomputers (not really called PC's yet) were amateur level while big iron will be needed to run important business matters into the forceeable future. Well that was one version of myopia and Sun/EDS suffer from another.
A consortium of companies competing with Linux said don't use Linux. There's a surprise.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
... when they say "Linux", do they mean any particular distribution, or is it a total generalization about the whole subject?
.. I dare say that the NSA's work on Linux has resulted in quite a secure operating system, were one to use their distribution.
.. none whatsoever. No point arguing, it will not change 30 years of experience with reality. Every Sysadmin/Unix Guru/Linux type I've met, who was able to think in terms of "de-tar -> working system", was a guaranteed viable hire, while those who parrot the distro 'truths' are generally junior-qualified, at best, and will probably need to be watched..
I think its that latter, which is interesting, because it belies a weakness in one of Linux' primary strengths: poor brand control.
Let me explain: In fact, 'some' distributions of "Linux" are very insecure, and forked, and quite bogus when it comes to Enterprise computing.
However, we all know this doesn't apply to "All if Linux"
It is interesting, however, that the argument is being made on "Enterprise" buttons.. the "insecurity of some distributions of Linux" is being used as a straw-man to divert managers' attention away from the very powerful fact of Linux in the Enterprise: any Enterprise which rolls its own Linux is going to have a superlative installation of the operating system.
As I have stated before, to me "Enterprise Linux" means rolling your own, plain and simple. Dufus admins may complaing "but this is too hard for us poor lowly administrators", but as I cut my teeth in big-iron Unix computing environments in the 70's, 80's, 90's and naughties, I have seen one kind of sysadmin to treasure and one to 'train', and the difference is on whether they can, in fact, assemble their own working installation/build from scratch, on a virgin disk/hardware configuration.
Whether or not a 'roll your own' is even 'thinkable' in a circumstance of computing use is, to me (and every Enterprise I've worked for/in) the standard which defines "enterprise" versus "personal/artistic" computing.
So, attacking Linux on its 'brand reality' and making overly generalized statements on 'the whole Linux scene' is to me a curious tactic, overlooking entirely that the best OS install for Enterprise is one hand-assembled by competent systems administrators.
(No, I do not personally think there is any argument for "competent systems administrator" not to include in its definition 'able to assemble and consequently administer own OS build'
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If they say Linux is good, then people start asking why Windows has been their choice for the backend on 2 major contracts ( in the $Billions with B ) one which failed ( British Inland Revenue ), and one that is on the verge of failing ( Navy/Marines intranet).
is full of horsesh!t,
/ 15/cz_dl_0315linux.html
s ID=3295
this is exactly what makes Linux so great, you can install & run Linux on anything from imbedded devices as small as wristwatchs & PDAs to IBMs Big Blue, Linux can scale just fine if Big Blue can run it..
http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2005/03
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?New
and secureing Linux is not a problem...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
What do those "IT heavyweights" know about "agility"? They're giant, ancient monolithic dinosaurs, threatened by the vastly more agile little mammal Linux.
--
make install -not war
www.sunsource.net
www.opensolaris.org
www.openoffice.org
Sun supports Linux, too
What were you saying?
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
The claims can be easily disproven. Unfortunately, while companies enjoy First Amendment protections, they are virtually immune to slander/libel. A pity, as there'd otherwise likely be enough money to be made from such a suit to keep every Linux user and developer fed and housed for the rest of their lives.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
These entrenched companies, led by Microsoft, have a particular blind spot when it comes to recognizing the damage they are doing to their own reputations and public image by continually and obviously lying to the public.
Microsoft has already damaged their reputation to the point that MOST IT professionals understand that anything MS says to them is most likely a lie. They may buy MS products for other compelling reasons, but always with the understanding that MS is a sneaky company.
Aren't they apprehensive, even a little, of having NO goodwill among their customers? If the technology competitive landscape changes (eg: the power of the monopoly weakens) their customers will be eager to jump ship.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
If there is one misconception about GNU/Linux that should be easily buried it is that GNU/Linux will fork into incompatible variants as Unix did. This ignores four very import points.
1) Unix forked in large part because every vendor had their own proprietary hardware which required that every application be ported and tested on each platform and that end uses had to buy and support the applications that they used on each flavor of Unix that they used. For better or worse, there are essentially only three Enterprise ISA's now for Linux, x86-32, x86-64 and Power. Instead of splintering, in two or three years, there will be only two, X86-64 and Power. Applications that run on one Vendors GNU/Linux/x86-64 box will run on every vendors box.
2) Unix vendors introduced unique product differentiation and because the source was not licensed under the GPL, each vendor was forced to implement features their own way, usually in a way that was incompatible with every other vendors implementation. Because GNU/Linux software is licensed under the GPL, that simply can't happen. If one vendor has a feature, they can all have it, and since it is the same source, it will run the same way.
3) This is a corallary to point 2, but in the past, not only did all Unix vendors have their own window system, they didn't support the other systems, so if you had a Motif application, it wouldn't run on a Sun system unless you bundled Motif with your app. In Linux, if you install all the window system toolkits, and given the cost of disks and memorythere is no reason not to, every windowing application you buy will run. In addition, since Linux is Unix, in the Enterprise, there is no real reason to install desktop apps on the client. Install them on App servers, and make them available to clients using NFS. This is vastly preferable to the Windows install everywhere approach.
4)Finally, if it were not enough that GNU/Linux/x86-64 is becoming a single platform, a huge number of Enterprise applications are written in Java so underlying architectural differences simply don't matter anyway.
In summary, the Linux will fragment like Unix did is a truly stupid argument that ignores that fact the Linux bears no similarity to traditional Unix other than supporting the same API's.
the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC.
Trust us, youz don' wanna use Linux, or else YOUZ MIGHT FIND YA SECURIDY SEVEEEALY THREATENED. Aight? Capisce? Good. I'm glad we seem ta have come to a undastandin' hea.
I am just amazed that an industry alliance group with both Sun and MicroSoft in it would have reservations about Linux.
I guess we should feel reassured that they have only our best interests heart.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Maybe they should ask Google how Insecure and Unscalable Linux is.
Cisco.. Dell.. Microsoft.. Oracle.. EDS!
:-))
These guys epitomize the "steamroll iteration N+.001 to the suck^H^H^H^Hcustomers for big bucks and do it again next year" business plan. They couldn't innovate their way out of the stone age.
And they call themselves AGILITY alliance, "solution for the Agile business"!?!
Aah, yeees, it's the Rational RUP thing again: we can't make it work for us, that's why we can tell you how to do it right
I better run into the datacenter and unplug all the Linux-powered EMC control stations and NAS heads we just bought! And they told us that they take security seriously! LIARS!
Not exactly.
Google may or may not use Linux scalability features, but the ability to scale their application is based upon Linux. Having open source, being able to modify to suit and not being dependent on an external party should not be undervalued.
Would Google have been as successful had they been based upon Windows? (it's a rhetorical question)
Well that's great, that's just fuckin' great man. Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now man... That's it man, game over man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?
Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don't we try that?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Oh Please. More 'Security through Obscurity' FUD. I work in a data center with about 8000 Linux server and around 200 Windows servers. The windows boxes get hacked 3 times more often than the Linux boxes. Of course these are just web servers. We all know the real hackers are going after desktops and cracking your pron collection. right?
UNIX: A set of Linux-like operating systems that grew out of an original version written by some guys at a phone company
It sounds like another smear campaign. It sounds to me like the ones that used to be the big boys are now throwing a fit, because they are not the big man on campus anymore. What do we expect? They are trying to save their reputations and sources of income. They obviously see Linux as a threat, otherwise, why bother??? The funny thing is that it is now taking an angry mob, to take on the Linus and his following.... People want Linux, it's apparent. Nobody said it was perfect. I think less than perfect is not so bad, when you look start weighing the possibilites and your wallet!
At the end of the day competition is good. Look what competition has done for microsoft in recent years. Many people dispute that linux/open source software has any affect on the big MS however its clearly not the case.
Over recent years windows has gone from 95 (super super crap) to 98 ( super crap ) to windows me ( ok but still crap) to XP on the desktop market. XP maybe slow in some situations but it works pretty well. There are still all the issues with worms and other issues with stupid users but at the end of the day windows has improved significantly and thats not going into the server market where its improved even more.
I personally see linux as a better server operating system than a desktop system even though I use it every day as my desktop at both work and home. Taking that into account its still a rock solid stable desktop (Slackware current) and I dont have any problems running it on my laptop.
So often there are big projects in the opensource community that fill real gaps but the lead programmers get to a point where they are happy and leave it at that. Its then taken up by other coders and the project is dead in few months or years because its become a mess, people have not realised how much time is involved in writing good efficient, secure code.. they got to the point where they are happy with it and so on..
One of the problems with where things are going with linux is that we will have redhat/suse and a few other distributions all running corporate level software.. and then there will be distributions like slackware, gentoo and others that will be used more in the technical enthusiest market. All of the different distributions have their place.. so do the different versions of windows.
At the end of the day you can have a secure user level windows box and linux / open source box with a web browser and you can almost bet that the windows box will be trojaned before the linux/open source one..
I worked on a product in the early 90's running on Unix. We supported a large number of different unixii, placing an enormous build, test, develop load that just should not have been there.
Our build script would test the version of unix for all sorts of bugs unique to each type (being system s/w, these bugs impacted us hugely). Our source and makefiles where littered with ifdefs to get around them on different systems.
We are well on the way to heading down the same path now. Release systems are different (.rpm?, .deb? etc), OS's are subtly different - system files move, boot scripts are organised differently.
Windows isn't perfect - there have been lots of changes as time moved on (e.g. registry, APIs, MSIs etc) but my app written for 9x still installs and runs on XP. Thats pretty impressive.
Forking is bad, bad, bad. It might not be the death of linux (there's always geeks like us who run it, and solid use cases in corporates) but its an impediment to development, to products, to consumer acceptance.
For example - I was just on a group where VIA were lambasted for only releasing some drivers for about a dozen varieties/versions/installers of linux. Cmon - thats a major effort and I take my hat off to them. But its no-where good enough to cover the broad scope that you need, and indeed my FC3 machine was not in the list.
Dont fork.
No, there is no indisputable point in your post, its your opinion. Your opinion is that linux is not as easy to use as windows. But what is easy for one person, isn't easy for someone else, so you can't claim anything to be indisputable facts.
If linux is less valuable to you because you would require time to be productive, then do not use it. There is no obligation involved here. Linux was written for the people who wrote it, and it serves them just fine. If other people benefit from that, great. If you don't, then go away. Whining about how people aren't making your perfect custom OS just for you, for free, because you want them to isn't going to help anyone.
Nobody cares what windows users want. Linux is for linux users. If you would like to be a linux user go right ahead. If you want free windows, hit up your local warez dood.
And finally, yes I truely don't care. I am not being defensive, I am telling you that your high and mighty opinion is still only that, opinion. You might think linux serves no purpose unless its exactly what you want, but plenty of people find it serving its purpose just fine. Its for those people, not you. And I am not from the community holding linux on its shoulders, I dislike linux and avoid it as best I can. I come from a unix background, and thus find linux to be ackward, nonsensical and poorly documented. But for mom's desktop, it beats the hell out of windows.
I use Office 2000, which uses normal looking widgets. However, I have seen Office XP/2003, which uses the exact same widgets Windows has, but with some outlines drawn around them.
Visual Studio? The same. And it didn't even do it before Visual Studio 2003.
Internet Explorer? Here, you're either trolling or confused because Internet Explorer uses native Windows widgets.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Windows apps all use the same native widgets. And by the way, even the apps that draw their own widgets aren't loading entire GUI libraries into memory to do it, like in the OSS world, which was another part of my point. Why do I have to load up four ways to manage button widgets in RAM just to get work done because people want "choice"? I just want to get my work done without losing all my memory to the reinvented (and reinvented, and reinvented) wheel.
On the first point, I will admit that I find it very furstrating that I cannot cut and paste properly when I am stuck using windows. But that's just because I am used to doing it a certain way, so the windows way seems awkward and counter-intuitive. That's not proof that windows is harder.
Second point, I don't care about linux replacing windows. Neither do the people writing linux. That's a dream of lonely dorks that circle jerk on slashdot all day, and it will never come true. And you don't want linux to be better, you want linux to be more like windows, and hence worse.
I am not telling you that you are wrong. I am telling you that I DO NOT CARE IF YOU DON'T LIKE LINUX. Which part of this is hard to understand. The universe does not revolve around you, there is no desire to spend hours and hours working hard to provide you with what you consider the perfect OS for free. If you don't like linux, don't use it. Plain and simple. Linux has no UI features, random GUI applications do, they have nothing to do with linux. And again, I have no linux-is-great pitchfork. I do not like linux. I certainly dislike it less than windows, but its worse than every other Unix system I've used, except unixware, and hp-ux. I am simply telling you the facts, linux is developed by linux users, for linux users. If you do not like what linux is, then nobody who matters cares, and nobody is willing to make linux crappier for you.
Windows 9x and Windows NT "forked" in the early 90's. MS hasn't devoted serious resources to the 9x codebase since Win 98. Virtually all of their new development has been on the NT codebase for many years now.
This is important because the real problem with forks is resource contention. Suppose there are 1000 competent Windows OS developers in the world. If Windows is forked then only a fraction of these developers will work on each branch. Neither fragment will be able to accomplish as much as the entire unified team.
Gnome and KDE are an excellent example. There are active development teams working on both systems, and there are application developers that have to choose one platform or the other. Neither desktop gets the full support of the community. I don't see how half the developers are going to be more than twice as productive in order to accelerate the rate of positive change for either desktop.
PS: Are you really complaining about the layout of the Start menu? I'm surprised that you managed to successfully install Linux if you can't figure out how to fix such a basic GUI element. I stumbled onto the Classic switch pretty quickly during my first session on XP.