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The Truth About Linux and Windows
petrus4 writes "Groklaw has an update on the Laura DiDio saga. Apparently, her complaints about "Linux extremists" notwithstanding, cooler heads than the usual suspects are asking questions about her research. A very interesting read, and one which will hopefully encourage corporate readers to regard the Yankee Group's findings with the requisite metric ton of salt in the future."
They even subscribe to some Enderle research because they see him "well connected" to important companies like microsoft.
I can't understand how being a paid shill _incresease_ their credibility with management; but somehow it does. MBA's. go figure.
This should settle all these arguments going around once and for all.
OS 1 is better than OS 2
Personally I like OS/390.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Why does Truth, Linux and Windows in the same sentence seems so awfully wrong to me?
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
The more i read that name the more my mind begins to replace Didio with Dildo.
And the more i read what Dildio has to say the more i think my dyslexia is right
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Since almost all wireless routers and firewalls (and many other embedded devices including digital projectors and printers) out there are already running Linux, and the vendors of these devices usually don't bother to point out to the customer what OS is it using, I'd say that many small business are already using Linux and don't even know it!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
We will have competition indefinitely. And this is a good good thing Oh I definitely agree, competition is good. But I also don't agree that open source software necessarily needs competition (at all) to improve. If a user wants a new feature or a bug fixed, then it actually happens, even without a competing product including that feature. That's the genius of open source. Not to mention that anyone can fork a project at any time if they don't like how it's going (although this isn't always true for what I consider shared-source projects, like under the CDDL). With Windows, if you don't like it, you have no choice except to not use Windows. With Linux, you do have a choice, and THAT is the fundamental difference.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
We will have competition indefinitely. And this is a good good thing.
/.er embrace economics. It's like hearing a Mac zealot say that 2 mouse buttons are better than one.
It's so nice to see a
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
2. the exact same situation exists with Windows, billions of dollars of damage has been done by worms, trojans, viruses, etc. in the last four years due to failure to keep current with Windows patches to known problems
3. What happens when the expanding markets of India and China grow a new customer base that is bigger than all existing computer users at present, and they choose not to use Windows in those systems?
Haha! The term "Linux-extremist" is redundant. The very definition of a "Linux-user" already contains the connotation of "extremist," inasmuch as all the users are zealous users and defenders of Linux. I have never met a lukewarm Linux user.
Well, think of it like this: we stepped outside, noticed the house was on fire, and we're trying to tell you to get the fuck out of there while you still can. Yes, I'd say we're a pretty zealous lot.
... that this is a pissing contest, and it has nothing to do with the real issue. The core issue is that Linux is compatable with the information age, because it treats the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate itself over the internet like a benefit. Windows is not, becuase it trys to treat information like "intellectual property" and sees the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat and "piracy". They (MS) have simply held themselves accountable to a paradigm that has no place in the information age, and they're trying to shift the argument to issues like "tco", and "features", and "hidded costs" to avoid it. In the long term, this is all totally irrelavent as to who wins. It doesn't matter what's Linux's flaws are - they will be remedied by market forces sooner or later.
I built a small office server for a company.
Spare Dell 400 mhz - 50$
mandrake -$
mysql - $
The office unknown to me had bought this very expensive win 2004 dell server (there network/computer consulting co told them they needed it to host my appliation). It was over 2000$. They didn't need it and the company couldn't install apache/mysql/php (Who do I call for support?).
I installed the linux and everything in about 4 hours. Linux installs have gotten much much better. Scary easy.
Basically the linux server has been chugging away for over a year with no problems. hardly maintenance. Nothing (Its behind a firewall). The windows server has had all sorts of networking issuse that keeps a tech visiting the office once a week.(granted its doing more but still).
Which is cheaper again???
Okay, here's a novel thought to settle the argument: Windows is better for some applications, and Linux is better for others. If I want to set up a desktop that's easy to use for those without engineering degrees, I'll probably recommend Windows. If I want to run a data center which requires high flexibility, fast file access, and reliable, reduntant storage, I'll use Linux, or possibly Solaris. And finally if I want to deploy a large number of engineering workstations, I'll go with Linux.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
As a veteran of selling on TCO, I've always got a kick out of these studies because they are so disconnected from reality. How can something that is like getting a five course buffet-style dinner for free somehow cost more than buying a meal a la carte, one dish at a time? I suppose it's the fact you've got to help yourself at the Linux buffet while they'll spoon feed you over at MS (and they really don't spoonfeed).
Linux has five advantages that simply render the conversation moot:
Cost of licenses
Customizability
Training Costs
Security
Out of box functionality
Linux licensing costs are self-explanatory. Hard to beat zero.
Linux is completely customizable. You can change anything and everything to fit your need.
MCSE certs are expensive. Linux certs are less so. Conversions from windows end users to linux are fairly painless. Sorry, Yankee, but learning how to operate a one windowing user interface is pretty easy when you are familiar with another.
Linux Security isn't perfect - but it's a quantum leap from Windows.
Where Windows cannot compete is with the out of the box capabilites of most every Linux distro. With Windows, you have to purchase thousands of dollars of software licenses to do what I can with my free download of Mephis or whatever. End user software is included. So is Server software. I'm out a minimum of $300 just to be able to do basic productivity. All those CALs add up with Windows.
-- $G
Niether is Microsoft Windows. Ask almost anyone who uses Windows. It's a hassle.
The issues you mention are installation. Few people could do a full windows install, including all vendor supplied device drivers.
The actual truth is BOTH systems are far beyond the capabilities of average, unsophisticated users, or anything other than casual day-to-day usage of common applications.
3. Windows will not be killed. Not going to happen. We will have competition indefinitely.
If you call 90% Microsoft market share with exclusionary back-room deals at all major computer manufacturers so that virtually no PCs ship with competitors products... then yet, looks like it's gonna be that way for some time. I just wouldn't call it "competition". "Monopoly" might be a much better word.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
What's sad to me is that this kind of spin can be seen in just about every poll/survey you'll see in the mainstream media. The numbers and wording are often spun in a way to imply a conclusion that has nothing to do with the real question at hand.
There was one recently that in a survey of over 600 kids, the ones who played video games were responsible for two-thirds of the violent acts recorded for the group.
How horrible! Ban video games, now!
Of course nowhere can it be found what percentage of those sruveyed played video games. If over two-thirds played video games, its just possible we should be forcing kids to play more video games.
Thus, I know that a server would require a high-paid consultant to set up.
Dude, you really need to have a talk with my boss then. Tell him he needs to pay me more. I set up and maintain a few linux servers and firewalls here where I work and I'm sure as hell not high paid.
Slackware
or some kid in high school who needs a little extra weekend cash...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Speaking as a person who has installed many differnt distributions of Linux and has been using Linux for 11 years. I would agree with the Grand Parent. It is not just about installing the packages it is configurating them to do what you need them to do. To a group of people who think in terms of Microsoft and have them start working in Linux is a bigger push. Concepts like mounting drives, Finding the print driver for one of the many possible print servers, best ways to share files, Samba or NFS?, Dealing with RWX RWX RWX based permissions, and groups, writtig shell scripts, the CronTab, Finding drivers and worse installing them, knowing where the logs are and how to read them. Working with Linux is much differnt then working on windows. I am not saying one is harder then the other but just that they are differnt way of thinking about solving problems and to switch a group of people from one OS to an other will be at best problematic.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I don't get your point, since the article is from BusinessWeek.
Unless you believe that BusinessWeek has no consideration for corporate interests.
Ah, the joys of the broad-stroked brush. Let's take this apart, shall we?
Which aspect of gaming: the server or the client? If you're talking about the client then, sadly, yes, Windows holds the edge here, since the graphics and sound drivers are more mature and better supported. However, for a server -- especially a public one -- you'd be a complete fool to put anything less secure than a Linux box on the net. Even better to put up one of the BSD variants.
The strokes don't get broader than this. But basically, all Windows is good for here is running Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). Everything else is better off running on Linux: Intranet Web servers, email servers, file servers, backup servers, Oracle, and corporate firewall.
There is nothing magic about streaming media, especially when it's done from a bunch of audio files stored on disk. Windows' proprietary DirectX brings nothing to the table here. So that means selecting for a robust, secure server platform, which makes the choice fairly obvious...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Face it, the ability to change operating system code is a benefit for .0001% of people and of absolutely no use to the other 99.9999% of people
That's just not true. I may never edit the source of a project or fork it. But I still benefit from the fact that others more knowledgeable than me can. Because of the forking and bugfixing that exists in the open source world I have:
Firefox instead of Netscape or IE
BMP instead of XMMS
Xorg instead of Xfree
Bug fixes that come faster than in the proprietary world
And I'm sure there's more that I'm just unaware of since I'm not a coder. A recent small example is that the latest Gnome didn't come with a menu editor. People complained and eventually a user (a non Gnome developer) made one. Now we're happy. Wouldn't have been so easy if they didn't have the code. See this article about how someone had to reverse engineer OSX just to get a desktop switcher. Which will probably become broken with the latest OSX release.
Well I have installed linux servers thousands of times.
I have not had a problem with bad installs in years.
I would agree years ago linux installs were not as easy
as they could have been, but time have changed a lot things.
If I get new hardware in, I test it to see if I have the drivers
I need to do the install. It is true linux does not
have all drivers for every piece of hardware out. If you have tried
installing linux lately, and it did not go well for you,
You still do not need the services of a consultant. What you
most likely need is the url of the hardware compatibility list.
Administering a linux server in not unlike maintaining
Microsoft servers. You will need to take the time to get accustomed to
the administrative task and applications. It is not out of your reach
to accomplish this. You should use the same sticktoitness that you
used to learn the Microsoft Os.
Good Luck on your next install.
Here's my own invalid anecdote (personal anecdotes are invalid as evidence of an overall trend):
We needed an Oracle server for a project at work. Because of the non-critical, but fairly high demand, nature of the app it needed a dedicated server, rather than getting to run on the shared Oracle server on the departmental Solaris box. So a simple Dell desktop was purchased with the fastest P4 available, plenty of RAM and IDE RAID-1 disks. This was fast enough to meet the needs, and it was decided stable enough for this application. If the server died it'd take at most a couple days for Dell to replace it, and that was an acceptable amount of time for it to be out of service.
Now because of anti-Windows zealotry of some people, it was decided that the server had to run Linux, SuSe was what they wanted. We didn't actually have anyone that was very experienced in Linux, mind you, just people that didn't like Windows, and Linux was the only viable x86 alternative to run Oracle on.
I tried several times to get SuSe to work, but it wouldn't. I did a net install from a CD, but after it was up it wouldn't get on the Internet anymore. I couldn't figure out what was happening. Answer turned out to be the network card was listed as unsupported by SuSe. Odd, given that their installer supported it fine.
So we switched to RedHat. Now I couldn't get the mirroring to work. Our Solaris guy came and fought with it for a couple days and got it working. I then went back to getting Oracle installed. This I could never get working, despite repeated attempts. The documentation didn't help, since it was assuming different things than what I had. Turns out this is because Oracle supports RedHat Enterprise Linux, not normal RedHat. Finally I was fed up and said "You want Linux, you install it." They fought with it for a few mroe days before calling Oracle who said "If it's not a supported OS we won't talk to you."
That put everything on hold since RHEL is quie expensive. I asked if I could please just try to install it on XP. They said fine, but it wouldn't work. I installed and patched XP, then installed Active PERL since that was needed for interfacing. I then put in the Oracle CD, told it to install, and it did so flawlessly.
So in the end what was about 2 weeks of fighting with Linux to no resolution was fixed in about 2 hours by installing Windows. The Windows license was to the effect of $100 (we got a discount). RHEL was looking like $1500 I think. Who knows what cost in staff time it would have taken to hack it to run on non-supported Linux, if it was even possible.
So in this case, Windows was a MUCH cheaper option.
Now this isn't to try and claim Windows is always cheaper, but rather to point out that little anecdotes, espically when related to s tiny server for a small project, aren't valid as evidence of a trend. Yes, there certianly are situations where Linux is the cheapest option, because it is available at no cost. However there are certianly cases where it's not, because the costs of making it work, or costs because of losses due to problems exceed the savings of not having to pay for it.
It's not a black and white issue.
It's a matter of admiration. Programmers/Open Source supporters admire people like James Gosling or Linus Torvalds. MBAs admire people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates (and probably have neutral opinions of Gosling/Torvalds) because they have "achieved" things that MBAs strive for. And therefore progammers admire/respect programming/design/Open Source etc. MBAs admire Microsoft, Apple etc. Thus, programmers/Open Source supporters give more regard to technical facts and Open Source personalities. MBAs give more regard to "research" funded or supported by companies like Microsoft or Apple (Apple supporters wait, don't stone me to death yet. I'm not necessarily saying that Apple does such things. I'm just saying that if it did, then MBAs would swallow it.)
So much for not getting caught up in a debate, that was pretty dismissive of Linux for a 'nothing is absolutely better' post.
Gaming, agreed, the driver support is there for fancy games and the commercial support is there for publishers, while at the same time nearly all good open-source games get ported to Windows. This is not a technical advantage, but an advantage of market penetration, and one that is a chicken and egg dilemma that may never get solved (gamers won't embrace linux until there are games, publishers won't embrace linux until gamers do).
Business applications, it really depends on which 'business apps' we are talking about. For many applications, you can essentially quote the previous paragraph. Quicken, MSOffice, and the incredible amount of one-off crap that can only afford to cater to one platform, and only one platform has a large enough market to sustain them....
However, a number of professional engineering applications can benefit greatly from running on Linux workstations. The business app argument is simply too broad, and ultimately this argument comes down to what applications are needed...
Enterprise servers, here is one field where I find it hard to believe anyone would automatically dismiss Linux and proclaim Windows the hands-down winner. To some extent, this too boils down to what administrative staff you can acquire and their experience, but if there is one profitable place where Linux shines it is making effective use of hardware resources in a robust, easily managed and reliable fashion. I will say for directory, maybe AD could be considered the better choice, Directory in general hasn't needed to be high performance, and ease of administration of AD is fairly high compared to OpenLDAP. However, MySQL/PostgreSQL, Apache, Samba, et. al. offer more flexibility than the MS-only counterparts, and even when the application can run under either platform, they are generally oriented toward linux-like behavior, feel more native in Linux, and greatly benefit from less-cruft found in Linux.
Streaming media to your TV? I would say MythTV hands down is *the* incredible platform of choice. I dislike their file browser for non-TV videos (it assumes encoded movies and a flat-view would be appropriate, even though series would be better represented by expandable entries), but I wrote my own and that really isn't the majority of people who would want that feature.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
After surveying a number of IT professionals about what they thought of Laura Didio.
75% said she was a stupid b%$^*
12.5% said she was a mindless whore.
12.5% said "who's Laura Didio".
Powerpoint presentations are currently being edited. This is a 3rd party survey so we can't give out any particulars of the survey or how it was presented. But we can tell you that no corporate sponsorship was involved.
Here's some insult to your injury...
.h files she doesn't even understand!
From the linked article:
When SCO first made its claims that IBM had misappropriated some of its code and handed it over to the Linux community, SCO showed samples to several analysts to prove its copyrights were being infringed. DiDio, a former journalist and not a programmer, was one of them. She reported that SCO's claims seemed justified. She told me: "It appeared to be a direct cut and paste right down to the developers' notes." A couple of months ago, the judge in the case wrote that he had seen "an astonishing lack of evidence" backing up SCO's claims. On the phone, I asked DiDio's reaction to the judge's statement. She said: "I can't reconcile it. I want to see what's presented in court."
So... what you have is a woman who is not a programmer, making conclusive statements after looking at
There's a point, like the boiling point... let us call this point the Enderle point... at which you have simply lost all professional credibility. You are seen as nothing more than a suck up, a Nathaniel Branden of IT (Little Ayn Rand hatred slipped out there, sorry).
Can we now write DiDio off as a shill? Like that woman who did fake newscasts for Bush, or Robert Novak?
I personally, welcome shills like DiDio. Every day respectable journalists let a woman like her survive, they put another nail in their coffin and the net and social-based expertise groups become authoritative sources for real news pulling from many sources to draw complete conclusions. So, I say, good on her. Make a few bucks at the Microsoft trough. Sell credibility you never had in the first place. Kill the industry rags. More opportunity for other people to emerge as experts when the people you used to listen to are revealed as phonies.