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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."
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And in other news, McDonalds sez "Burger King is bad for you! Try our new salads!"
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Who could imagine Sun and Microsoft speaking out against Linux... Just Shocking!
The Answer
In other news:
Democrats advise constituents against voting Republican.
Apple recommends iTunes users to purchase iPod.
McDonald's suggests that Burger King's fries are bad for your heart.
Snowball introduced to hell. Snowball melts.
Sun rises in east for 1,324,408,203rd consecutive day.
Thomas Galvin
Oh look, Microsoft is in that bunch too, the internets surprise me daily.
Obviously, I thought the study was biased, looking at the list of supporting companies. But then I RTFA:
The alliance comprises a group of IT hardware and software firms that have combined their expertise and products to help EDS create 'best of breed' solutions and compete with the likes of IBM Global Services and Hewlett-Packard for the most lucrative government and enterprise contracts.
Well, if Microsoft wants a lucrative government contract, clearly the organization that is supporting this move is going to decry the competition to push its own agenda.
Why do people even listen to these organizations? I suppose you know their bias from the outset, rather than having to 'read between the lines' of other organizations.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
From TFH:
From TFA:
Fuji Xerox = Oracle?
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
The top arcticle on Slashdot states:
..and the one below it states:
;)
EDS: Linux is Insecure, Unscalable
Google and Their Server Farm
Google is small, they always get hacked and their search engine doesn't scale. QED.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
What's wrong with "securifying"? It's a perfectly cromulent word.
Actually the kernel is forked all the time - most of the non x86 architectures start life as forks and eventually make their way back into the kernel.org kernel. Each new version is also a fork, which is why you can still get 2.0, 2.2, 2.4 as well as 2.6 - forks are part of the development model for the kernel, and are also part of many closed-source development models. Unless, of course, you completely stop all work on an existing product to produce a new version.
Forks ARE bad things. The mantra of "choice" isn't applicable to every situation. Standardizing on a platform is difficult enough in the Linux world. Forking things whenever one of the devs feels wronged (usually how these things get started) just increases the confusion and non-interoperability between multiple platforms. It's one more to support and worry about.
Desktop Linux has, for the most part, stagnated because KDE and GNOME won't merge into one mega-standard. Instead, we must continue to install both entire desktop environments just to comfortably run each other's apps. It's absolutely ridiculous the way the wheel gets reinvented several times over. If you're running GNOME, a KDE app, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice, you've got at least four major libraries now sitting in your memory, all doing the same things but with different code, implementing their own GUI widgets. You're never going to have desktop standards that way.
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The Linux kernel does have quite a few forks. They're just not big, seperate forks. Their work gets routinely folded back into Linus' fork. There's the personal forks like Alan Cox's -ac patch, Andrew Mortons' -mm patch, etc. Many architectures and sub-projects also maintain their own forks. So forks aren't bad on their own. Open Source licenses allow the different forks to share their work. It's just that the big commercial entities like to keep reminding people of the devastating Unix fork. To their commercial mindset it's the only type of fork they can imagine. And they're obviously trying to slow the commoditization of software through adoption of Open Source.
Nice way of completely missing the point.
KDE and Gnome have nothing to do with forks. They're completely different things, independently developed, and which for the most part share no code. You can't just merge them because the architecture is different.
Having several different libraries that implement widgets have nothing to do with forking. And at least Linux has only two big ones. I rarely use Windows anymore, but each time I do I'm amazed at the non-standard look of every damned application. I mean, for some bizarre reason every firewall, antivirus, IM program, office suite, etc. has to have its own widgets, and MS applications aren't an exception.
A fork is a division in the development of a program. For instance, what happened with XFree. It was stagnating, so a group of developers decided to take the current tree, and work on it separately. Result is that we now have an actually active development in Xorg. I fail to see anything bad about it.
..that Linux is unscalable.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
And now a message from the national apple society:
FUCK PEARS!
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
That's true, but it's nowhere near how bad it is in Linux. If your only standard for comparison is the way Windows looks, desktop Linux is never going to improve. And regardless, the vast majority of Windows apps DO look the same and use native widgets, have buttons in the same place, have the same menu items, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and can copy-paste damn near anything between each other. The Linux offerings don't come close, because they won't standardize.
Just wondering...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Just to add to this point: Windows users such as myself are spoiled because of this. I've tried to adopt Linux a couple of times, but these very problems that were mentioned made me throw my arms up in defeat. It really is hard to switch to Linux when a.) It's an uphill battle all the way and b.) Windows has actually achieved a decent computing experience. (If you're shaking your head, make a BSOD comment and watch how quickly you're corrected.)
Feel free to dismiss me as a newb or a dumb-shit or whatever. I have no problem with that. I didn't put hours and hours into Linux. Niether will a lot of 'desktop' people that Linux is going after. This is why I'm so critical of having to edit
I do want to mention something, though: Knoppix is headed in the right direction. I used it about a year ago and was stunned that a.) it auto-detected everything just fine, b.) I had no problem finding what I needed, c.) It more or less behaved like Windows. I wish I could be more specific, but it was the first time that I ever used Linux and didn't feel like I was lugging around a ball and chain. So I don't want to sound like Linux will never improve, obviously it is. I just hope one day a little more thought in the direction of "Microsoft's already trained 10s of millions of peoples how to use a computer..." happens.
"Derp de derp."
I completely agree. But that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore who wrote the message. Do you ignore who the author of the book was? Or who wrote the article? I don't lend everyone the same credence. It is very different for the criminal to claim he is innocent than for his supposed victim to claim he is innocent. The author makes all the difference.
In this case, it is merely amusing to note who the author is, because clearly, the claims are absurd. Linux has been shown to be capable of high security (an agency called the NSA helped us in this area, IIRC). It has also been shown multiple times that it is very scalable (Google, anyone?). This has nothing to do with my opinion of Linux, it merely has to do with basic standards of credibility. It is akin to standing in front of a Rolls Royce and claiming that it is a low quality, inferior car. This is amusing, but it is even more amusing when you find out it's a Chevy salesman making the speech.
Unfortunately, what will happen is that people will counter the article's reactionary opinion with an opposite reactionary opinion.
First, I'm not sure how the article is expressing a reactionary opinion; I don't know of anything it was "reacting" to. It seems more like a baseless attack to me. Secondly, just because someone disagrees with an article does not automatically render their arguments invalid or "reactionary", as you suggest.
Lastly, as a bit of concession, I do think balanced opinions are good. But that doesn't mean we should dignify this kind of propoganda. If someone (anyone, even the EDS) comes along with something that is measured, qualified and well-researched, then we can address it in turn. But this does not deserve serious attention. This is a classic marketing move - "The OTHER product is insecure, it doesn't work on a large scale, it is more expensive, and, oh look! We have an alternative right here!" Take another look at what this guy is saying and tell me honestly that there is anything remotely concrete in what he is saying.
"From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment. We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment," said Rasmussen.
"We are concerned about security on an open standard environment like that. We are also concerned about some of the scalability issues that we are seeing on our clients on a global basis. Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications -- until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there. We think Linux has the possibility of going the same route," said Rasmussen.
"Quite honestly, in the notion of costs, as we look at what we are structuring with our alliance partners, we are not seeing a compelling cost advantage that would lend us towards Linux -- given the other things I have mentioned," said Rasmussen.
Jim Hassell, managing director of Sun Microsystems Australia, argued that Linux was no loss to the Agility Alliance because it could use Solaris 10 instead of Linux rival Red Hat.
"If you test Red Hat against Solaris 10 against whatever else... we would say that Solaris 10 beats it hands down on functionality and everything else," said Hassell.
Hmm...actually, out of all of the groups.companies listed up there...I'd almost have to say EDS This stupid &$*#(# NMCI system they have burdened the Navy with cannot be described any nicer than as a royal 'clusterfuck'...horrible network connectivity...using windows, no good apps for admins to connect and admin to their machines...so slow, and restrictive. I mean, sure, it might be ok for a secretary to use just to do some word docs and powerpoint presentations, but, for people that need to code or so serious admin work...TOTALLY useless.
And that is ONLY the functionality issues...they way they fuck the govt. out of money by what they charge is outrageous...not to mention the red tape involved just to get a simple request fulfilled.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They say linux doesn't scale well. SGI has Linux systems with 256 cpus in a node. http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/ Microsoft is only now getting a cluster version of their OS http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0 3/04/2134229&tid=201&tid=231&tid=156
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison