A New Look at Linux vs. Windows TCO

An anonymous reader writes "Laura DiDio, research fellow at the Yankee Group, published a column this morning in which she discusses key findings from a new survey on the total cost of ownership of Windows vs. Linux. DiDio often is written off by the Linux camp as being pro-Microsoft, but she offers excellent, neutral advice for any IT department considering a fundamental systems switch: 'If you do not know what is on your network, if you cannot at least estimate the hourly, monthly or yearly cost of downtime, if you do not know how long it takes to recover from a security outage, if you cannot answer questions about the extent of your company's license compliance, then you cannot truly evaluate whether Linux, Windows or Unix is right for your business. Chances are, if you cannot answer most or all of those questions, it does not matter what operating system you have because ignorance of the core TCO tenets means that your business is not getting the most out of its networks.' "

Comments

Well, no.

[miffo.swe]

"but she offers excellent, neutral advice"

The person who wrote this has not been reading her other work. Neutral isnt even on the map.

Re:Well, no.

[silentbozo]

Yes, I was about to say, isn't she the "analyst" who was pimping for SCO for a while, before they got too hot to handle?

Re:Well, no.

[silentbozo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_DiDio

That says it all.

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Neutral isnt even on the map

Unlike, of course, most of the people who post here...

Re:Well, no.

[neillewis]

She was rather too credulous about Darl McBride's initial claims about code copying, and the examples shown at SCOForum in 2003 that were pretty conclusively shot down soon after.

I think she was duped like a lot of the trade press and hopefully she learned her lesson.

There's been a lot of febrile speculation about her motives, but most of it is unsubstantiated or just plain malicious. She's written some interesting stuff about linux which doen't back up the idea that she's Yet Another astroturfer for SCO or anyone else.

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I quote, "How much of a difference can you see? Thirty-two bit is more than good enough." Who needs two kidneys, one can do the job! Now this is the same person that's responsible for advising people on the uptime of networks? The just-good-enough attitude will get you a quick judo chop to the throat where I work....

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

As others I'm sure have allready mentioned, the personal and covertly threatening attack on Pamela Jones privacy is completely and forever unforgivable. The best Laura Didio could do is a complete and unconditional apology and to move her journalism on to some other industry completely.

Re:Well, no.

[NickFortune]

The person who wrote this has not been reading her other work. Neutral isnt even on the map.

I notice the article was submitted by "an anonymous reader".

Maybe the person who wrote this has been writing her previous work.

Re:Well, no.

[slashdotnickname]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_DiDio

Not only is that article highly POV, but I question this person's encyclopedic importance.

Re:Well, no.

[NickFortune]

As others I'm sure have allready mentioned, the personal and covertly threatening attack on Pamela Jones privacy is completely and forever unforgivable.

True enough. Didio went well beyone "credulous" and into personal and vindicitve.

Re:Well, no.

[Dunbal]

From wiki:
but you can't take that idea of free and open and put it into a capitalist system and maintain it as though it is some kind of hippie commune or ashram, because if you can do it like that, at that point I'm like, 'Pass the hookah please!'"

and
But if Linux is really to take its place alongside Windows... then the vendors in this space cannot act like a bunch of hippies in a '60s commune or ashram. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

      So basically:

1) This can't happen because of what I feel about it; and

2) What I see is happening shouldn't happen because: I think it shouldn't.

      This gal seems to have a lot of distortions there. There's nothing wrong with having an opinion and a firm belief. The problem comes when you try to justify your belief based on flawed logic, then use your position as a reporter to try to convince others that your belief is correct. It becomes preaching rather than reporting.

      On the other hand, can we take the fact that the current article is rather ambiguous as a changing belief on her part?

Re:Well, no.

[neillewis]

It wasn't Laura DiDio who invaded PJ's privacy. it was Maureen O'Gara (of course, with the assistance of SCO).

We haven't heard much from Maureen since...

Re:Well, no.

[TarryTops]

Bottom line is all the MS bitches are feeling out of place in the whole new revolution. That's it. If they do eventually join the bandwagon, they'll be only for a rude surprize. you can the direction but you can't change your lifestyle.

Re:Well, no.

[MrHanky]

Neutral isnt even on the map

Unlike, of course, most of the people who post here...

You get a lot of strange comments on Slashdot. But posting something by DiDio on the front page is the equivalent of posting a press release from the GNAA, stamping it with a +5, troll, and calling it news.

It just shows that the editors have given up this site a long time ago.

Re:Well, no.

[nutshell42]

Well, at least we don't call ourselves senior analysts for /. Research.

Actually, we could try that some time. Noone's gonna take advise from "some dude on /." but from an "Excellent Karma Advisor" with "the Taco Group". You can get the most ridiculous things on the front pages if you put an "XYZ Group" somewhere. Just ask Rob Enderle.

Re:Well, no.

[jkrise]

"Neutral isnt even on the map."

I would say even 'advice' isn't in the article. The so-called TCO study contains a lot of recycled FUD couched in nice-sounding words. It also leads to the mistaken impression that it is possible to assess the cost of a Windows box, network or server.. with any degree of accuracy.

Half the article talks about Linux desktops and the rest aims to spread the FUD about Linux based servers. Where is the advice in this article?

Re:Well, no.

[eric_brissette]

I can't believe she compared SCO to the Red Sox.

She truly is a terrible person.

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is that article highly POV, but I question this person's encyclopedic importance.

And therein lies one of the problems with an open encyclopedia such as wiki... there are few standards for how to create articles.

An encyclopedia entry about one person should be biographical in nature, rather than just a rant or a one-sided view about a particular small aspect of that person.

Naturally, anybody could update it if they wanted to, but the only people qualified to do that are people who know Laura personally. And even then, as you said, why does this person need to be in an encyclopedia to begin with?

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

You could call for vote for deletion. I suspect that such a vote would pass by a significant margin.

Re:Well, no.

[squiggleslash]

As others have pointed out, DiDio didn't have anything to do with the attacks on PJ's privacy, that was Maureen O'Gara. However, she was criticised by the Noorda family (who at one point part owned SCO as part of Canopy, but by all accounts were not responsible for what was going on, ultimately causing a falling out that lead Ralph Yarrow to take over SCO and Canopy's interest in SCO) for sloppy and inaccurate speculation about the deaths of family members:

But the journalistic integrity of any publication is defeated when articles, such as those recently appearing in the Salt Lake Tribune, include quotes from "analysts" who are completely misleading and just plain wrong about nearly every fact and interpretation. When the information provided by analysts like Rob Enderle and Laura DiDio weren't incorrect, their statements represented speculation more fitting to a daytime soap opera than to the business section of a newspaper.

-- Brent Noorda

Some feel DiDio took her apparent anti-open source agenda too far with a series of snide pot-shots at the various enemies of SCO that hit below the belt. So while she may not have performed the same actions as O'Gara, she certainly seems to belong to the same club. There are journalists, and then there are advocates who masquerade as journalists. Once someone feels the need to travel down a path that leads only to slander and other personal attacks on individuals who happen to be "on the other side", whether you're a cheap technology journalist like DiDio or O'Gara, or a successful political hack like Robert Novak, your credibility is ruined.

DiDio would do well to ask herself if she wants to be a columnist or a journalist. And if the latter, she'd probably do well to move to a different industry.

Re:Well, no.

[morgan_greywolf]

DiDiot isn't a reporter -- she's an analyst with the Giga Group, which used to be Forrester Research. So she's got a significantly more influence than just a reporter. People (PHBs mostly) listen to her and make decisions about whether or not buy or use a particular technology. Some companies have stayed away from Linux based on DiDiot's comments.

Re:Well, no.

[ultranova]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_DiDio

Not only is that article highly POV, but I question this person's encyclopedic importance.

I question the importance of encyclopedic importance as a criterion of inclusion of articles in online encyclopedias.

In a traditional dead-tree encyclopedia there are limits to the amount of information that the book can contain, which are imposed by the mass and space needed to store each additional letter. This means that a traditional encyclopedia needs to limit the articles it contains into the most important ones - after all, if it includes an unimportant article, it must drop an important one to make room for it.

An online encyclopedia, on the other hand, has no (practical) limitations. You never need to delete an article to make room for another one. Yes, digital storage space has practical limits, but those are so ridicilously high compared to a dead-tree encyclopedia that they are practically nonexistent. The only constraint is the search system, and that has shown itself perfectly capable of handling the current volume of articles. Therefore, as long as the article is factually correct (which I don't know if this article is, since I don't know anything about this person), adding it will never decrease the usability of an online encyclopedia, and will very likely increase it.

Re:Well, no.

[SoloFlyer2]

I think it was summed up best by Noel on Linux Today:

"[Laura DiDio] has no clue about writing code. Not a single bit at all... For goodness sake this person has only a B.A. in communication degree. She writes magazine articles not code..."

That one line sums up Laura DiDio perfectly, she doesnt have any qualifications in IT, she should go do what she has the training and abilities to do... Write reports on supernatural occurances and alien abductions for supermarket tabloids...

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't go so far as to agree with how she said it, but I would agree with the basic tenant of a capitalistic market, that we all exist in. For anything to exist and be ultimately successful in this market, you must pay for it.

You see, you paid for your computer, the internet service you are viewing this on, etc. That money came from somewhere. Ultimately money must flow from producer to source and back again. A completely free OS does not fit into this market. No one gains from its use.

Companies are ultimately choosing Redhat and SUSE, not because they are free, because to them they are not, but because they are supported. They choose Microsoft for the same reason. It is a form of insurance. Without supportability, and without paying for that support, ultimately, Linux could be the best OS that ever existed, it would never penetrate the market, except in commoditizable tasks.

Re:Well, no.

[chrisjwray]

My god. She's ugly.

Re:Well, no.

[Marc Rochkind]

Very well said, and you might have added that one reason why it's important to have articles on relatively obscure subjects is that another article may mention the subject, and then the reader can just click on a link to find out more. Much like the way a footnote works.

For example, an article on Linda Ronstadt mentioned the Stone Poneys, for which there was no article. There is now, though! ;-)

I looked at the DiDio article, and it's very well done. It does indeed present her POV, but by quoting her (accurately, I assume). This is quite different from the article itself taking her POV.

Re:Well, no.

[whovian]

Not only is that article highly POV, but I question this person's encyclopedic importance.

I think I understand your point, but Wikipedia has been becoming my search engine of choice when it comes to searching for basic information. The results from the usual search engines just aren't as succinct, are laden with advertisement, or lead to dead pages.

Re:Well, no.

[NickFortune]

As others have pointed out, DiDio didn't have anything to do with the attacks on PJ's privacy, that was Maureen O'Gara.

Conceeded. Like you say, they had a lot in common, but I'll grant that DiDio never stooped so low as that.

Re:Well, no.

[ryanov]

I think the problem is less with the quality of the article and more with the fact that anyone cares what she has to say. The quotes on that page are ridiculous. I use Linux 'cuz it's free and it works as I expect it to. How is that a love fest? Idiotic.

Re:Well, no.

[jedidiah]

Except intellectual property SHATTERS that tenet. Much of what fuels our current capitalist economy has no real existence and no real cost beyond original development. That original development may have well happened CENTURIES ago.

People are still making movies out of stories that are litterally Millenia old. Companies manage to use software that's no longer supported. Something may suit the particular task far better than anything that is still "supported".

Not every bit of invention or authorship requires perpetual handholding. Infact most don't. This is what really separates the mature technology from the babies.

It is the goal of Computer Science academics to reach the point where none of that hand holding would be necessary. To assume that such shenanigans will always be necessary is foolish. It's also wrong as a matter of what's already going on in the industry to presume that companies are unwilling or unable to support themselves.

Infact, when it comes to critical business processes it is far FAR better to be not so dependent on others.

The first lesson of commercial software is that the vendor will eventually go out of business or discontinue your current version of the product making your initial "investment" worthless.

Re:Well, no.

[jedidiah]

I will at least freely admit that I am a zealot and fully disclose my bias and my motivations for that bias.

Re:Well, no.

[Matilda the Hun]

I wouldn't consider Jack Thompson or Maddox to be of encyclopedic importance. But it's not an encyclopedia, so it's all good. Information, if you didn't notice, is what you get when you open a wiki for anyone to submit any kind of information to. Heck, sometimes Wikipedia contains information that's only minutes old. It's not your dad's encyclopedia.

Re:Well, no.

[Marc Rochkind]

Lots of people care about what she says, obviously, judging by the reaction here and in other forums to what she says. Whether the quotes are "ridiculous" is immaterial, as long as they are accurate.

Inasmuch as many people who hear about DiDio might want to know who she is and why she upsets so many people, it's useful for the Wikipedia to provide the information. That you, and I take it, many others disagree with her is not a reason for her article to be removed or, for that matter, for her views to not be heard.

Perhaps we simply have a basic disagreement about public discourse. I want to hear views with which I disagree, and I assume that others can apply their own critical thinking. If they can't, then I question whether they should even be exposed to views with which they do agree.

Re:Well, no.

[pogson]

Didio has given up selling us on Windows. Now she wants to delay switching to preserve the monopoly and maximize profits for Microsoft. If anyone had a car that had the wheels fall off every day and the manufacturer refused to fix it, would we hesitate to get another car? Would we weigh the cost/benfit? No! Microsoft is killing computing. It is a cancer breaking down the immune system of IT. We can see the huge costs of it and it is life threatening. There is no need to measure cost benefit. Almost anything else would be better if it is modular and has any natural immunity to malware such as the unices. Linux being free in many senses and having a wide, satisified customer base, is a readily available reliable alternative. One does not need cost breakdowns to make the choice.

Does Linux do the job? Yes. Take it. I switched to Linux years ago. Windows was driving me crazy with crashes hourly. I have not regretted the switch for an instant. I have used Linux on hundreds of systems with great success. I have rarely had a crash and most of them were soft landings involving the GUI. I have never lost data. I have never had a virus. I have had unlimited uptime. I have had good performance and software selection. Using Linux Terminal Server, I have been able to run thirty old machines from one new machine with Linux. There is no comparision in cost between a per-seat licensed system full of bugs and a free system with few bugs.

Re:Well, no.

[fitten]

The person who wrote this has not been reading her other work. Neutral isnt even on the map.

Yeah.... someone who usually writes biased articles can't ever, never, ever write a neutral one again. Slashdot logic at its best. I read the article, it is fairly neutral. Whether or not the advice offered is "excellent" or not may be in question, but it was fairly neutral.

OH... I get it... you took the description of this article to be a description of everything she ever wrote. Kind of like if you are complimented on a task you just performed, it means that everything you've ever done is great or that if you are criticized on a task you just performed, everything you've ever done is crap.

There ought to be a reading comprehension test requirement for posting rights on slashdot... but I guess then there'd be almost no posts.

Re:Well, no.

[Clith]

Not only is that article highly POV, but I question this person's encyclopedic importance.

An online encyclopedia [..] has no (practical) limitations.

Maybe.. we could just use a grey font or a reduced type size?

Re:Well, no.

[Kjella]

Therefore, as long as the article is factually correct (which I don't know if this article is, since I don't know anything about this person), adding it will never decrease the usability of an online encyclopedia, and will very likely increase it.

You've obviously never read a story with a real side-heavy spin. As a simple exercise, try writing two articles about Linux, one where it is a rag-tag hacker system made by hippies, and one where it is the easiest to use and most well-supported desktop imaginable, without actually telling a lie. You can do both, but factual != objective. You can lie by omission and lie by presentation. There's a reason for the saying "Lies, damn lies and statistics".

A wikipedia isn't a place where conflicting opinions of this kind is presented, it has one page of a claimed consensus (even though you might check the edit history). As long as wikipedia operates by having one article that is presented as objective truth, spin is bad. Even if you use facts to impose your opinion on it.

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP!!!

Re:Well, no.

[ryanov]

I am all for hearing the opposing viewpoint, just not from an obvious bonehead (Ann Coulter, Laura DiDio, etc.). I'd rather argue with someone who isn't just spouting rhetoric and really has something to say. "Pass the hookah" talk about Linux is just an attempt at incitement, not to be insightful.

Re:Well, no.

[Marc Rochkind]

I follow what you're saying...

But, when I'm enjoying Al Franken, I sometimes wonder whether he's our "Ann Coulter." Of course, he sure seems to be telling the truth, not lies like she tells, but perhaps my bias is affecting my critical powers?

Naaaaaaaahhhh.....

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.... someone who usually writes biased articles can't ever, never, ever write a neutral one again.

However, when someone has written a series of heavily biased articles... and then produces a single neutral article, perhapse we can be forgiven for wondering what the angle is.

Re:Well, no.

[ryanov]

Even if he is, at least he has decent manners and doesn't come off like a reactionary gasbag... and I'm not sure if you've read Lying Liars, but his documentation is a lot less bullshit filled than hers.

Re:Well, no.

[guaigean]

A BA in communications? So basically she has a degree in bullshit.

Re:Well, no.

[Pat69]

The wiki isn't very objective. Right at the top in the brief biography, is says: "She is also a SCO whore." Fact? Perhaps. But then under her picture her name is mis-spelled as "DilDio" - an obvious reference to "dildo". Yeah, really mature. This is the kind of crap that makes the wiki less than useful.

Re:Well, no.

[Shaper_pmp]

Maybe I'm being astonishingly naive, but I thought it was obvious that the article had been defaced since the Slashdot story was posted.

Or do you seriously reckon something so downright and obviously biased would have survived long on Wikipedia?

Re:Well, no.

[Bun]

The wiki isn't very objective. Right at the top in the brief biography, is says: "She is also a SCO whore."

No, it doesn't. Nowhere on the entire page does it say that sentence you have in quotes.

Re:Well, no.

[codeguy007]

Information? Wikipedia is at best filled with commonly accepted myths and partial truths. Even a hard cover Encyclopedia is not considered a good resource of information. It's just a starting point for your research which hopefully points you in the right direction. There's a reason encyclopedia's aren't accepted as more than research tools at the Post Secondary level and not authoritative sources.

In a lot of ways wikipedia is worse. If I post something to wikipedia that's factually incomplete or incorrect, it stays like that until someone changes it for better or for worse.

It's fine as a general purpose research tool but anyone using it as a factual source in an argument is naive at best and probably a fool.

Re:Well, no.

[markhb]

Read the history... that article has been edited over 2 dozen times today, much of which is undoubtedly vandalism & counter-vandalism.

Re:Well, no.

[markhb]

She went to Fordham University, which is in the Bronx.

To quote one Michael McGreevey, "'Nuff Said"

Re:Well, no.

[mysidia]

Sure, if by neutral you mean favoring the status-quo with respect to Microsoft's dominance.

Don't you know, monopolists get to re-define English words like neutral, just like they get to re-define the meaning of studies and objective research by commissioning the researchers.

Nope, it is not just dictionary publishers that get to define words :)

Re:Well, no.

[silentbozo]

In my defense, it didn't say that when I posted the link, which unfortunately, is a weakness of the wiki (it can be altered, by anyone.) If you look at the history of the article, there have been 28 edits today, one of which mentions "removing insults", and another "remove vandalism". On the plus side, many of the 28 edits mentioned making factual and grammatical corrections, which hopefully stayed, and improved the article.

Re:Well, no.

[mysidia]

{{subst:sofixit}}

Sorry, I couldn't resist. But I think there is no need to worry about obvious vandalism to an article in a Wiki on the subject of DiDio... in the time it would have taken to write the slashdot comment about it one could have easily pulled up the revision history for the article, found the obvious good version (prior to the soiling by an anonymous user), hit edit and save... :)

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does she realize that her story is served up on Linux boxen http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /www.newsfactor.com

BehaveDave

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who? I thought this was the article an article about old people using email in korea...

Re:Well, no.

[Citizen of Earth]

It wasn't Laura DiDio who invaded PJ's privacy. it was Maureen O'Gara (of course, with the assistance of SCO).

Yes, but has anyone ever seen Laura DiDio, Maureen O'Gara, and Darl McBride in the same room at the same time? And if so, has each of them been observed to speak while the other two drank a glass of water?

Re:Well, no.

[Castar]

Hmm....

L'idiot - French for idiot.
D'idiot - French, for "of the idiot"
D'idio - Pronunciation of above.
DiDio - Simplification.

That explains a lot.

Re:Well, no.

[o'reor]

Which goes to show that although the Wikipedia cooperative tool is a wonderful project and can yield excellent articles on consensual and otherwise well-researched topics, it is actually useless when it comes to touchy subjects. Vandalism certainly doesn't help.

Re:Well, no.

[killjoe]

God I wish there was a web site where people would publish the names of their companies and the CXOs that make decisions based on what analysts say. That way we could all make sure none of our money was invested in companies run by idiots who can't think for themselves.

Re:Well, no.

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

Well now, there is an over simplistic view. Your average CEO does not know much about IT. But that's allright. Odds are their business is making widgets or providing some kind of service. That is the business that they understand. Now if you have a choice to do something techie, the first question any sensible non tech will ask is "Do we need it?" This is typically followed by "What is the most effective method"

Now if you are an all Windows shop, then surely the conclusion can be reached that an all Microsoft server is the way to go. The company has already got the know how in place. So reading a report like Laura's makes sense to a CEO. To a CIO, the report should be ignored for the question, "What is going to give us most bang for our buck?"

But to summarise why your point is an invalid one,
A foolish man does not learn from his mistakes, a smart man does learn from his mistakes, a wise man learns from others mistakes. So a CEO that reads an analyst's report like Laura's (and surprisingly her points on this article are quite good. Without auditing, improvement is not measurable...) is a responsible thing to do. AS LONG AS HE UNDERSTANDS THAT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO SELL HIM SOMETHING!

btw. I am running ubuntu and have great love for the GNU/Linux (tm) thing.

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Breathing , does protect one from polluted air and bad fumes

Re:Well, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then isn't the solution to add *all* the facts, not merely those which support only one side of things?

Re:Well, no.

[killjoe]

"Well now, there is an over simplistic view. Your average CEO does not know much about IT. But that's allright. Odds are their business is making widgets or providing some kind of service."

THe chairman of GM probably can't put together a car, doesn't hold an automotive engineering degree, and is wholly unfamiliar with the equations that dictate the turbulent airflow around a car. So when it comes to making a decision on what shape a car should have does he listen to an analyst or does he leave that decision to an engineer?

The same thing applies here. If a CIO is unable to understand the complex issues about operating systems does he leave that up to his engineers or does he listen to an analyst? If he listens to an analyst (especially one with no qualifications like DiDio) then he is a retard and a sever danger to shareholder.

"Now if you are an all Windows shop, then surely the conclusion can be reached that an all Microsoft server is the way to go. "

One you have made a decision to be an all windows show you have already made you mistake. You have basically decided that no matter what the task, no matter what your engineers say, no matter how much the market changes, no matter what your competitots are doing, no matter how much your business changes MS is the best and only vendor for all your IT needs. At that point you are retard and a danger to your shareholder. Anybody who thinks that only vendor can and should meet all of their IT needs is a morom.

"btw. I am running ubuntu and have great love for the GNU/Linux (tm) thing."

This seems to be common refrain from MS shills here. Somehow I don't believe you. When somebody says something like this I pile it on heap of "I don't like MS but XP is rock solid and flawless" and "Linux zealots should just shut up" and other cut and paste phrases from the MS astro turfers handbook.

Re:Well, no.

[Chuq]

Not only is that article highly POV, but I question this person's encyclopedic importance.

There are many good times to state that a certain topic is not important enough for a wikipedia article - however, as a reply to someone specifically asking for more information about the named person? Sounds like the article is quite useful and has served its purpose well.

Re:Well, no.

[turbidostato]

"Wikipedia is at best filled with commonly accepted myths and partial truths"

Just as any "dead trees" encyclopedia. In fact, that would be a rather good definition of encyclopedia: connundrum made out of commonly accepted myths and partial truths.

"In a lot of ways wikipedia is worse. If I post something to wikipedia that's factually incomplete or incorrect, it stays like that until someone changes it for better or for worse."

How can make that any worse? When an entry on an "standard" encyclopedia is factually incomplete or incorrect, it stays like that until only one side (the editor) wants to change it, for the better or the worse, and that will only happen on newer editions of the encyclopedia, while older will remain unchanged.

So, all in all, something like Wikipedia stands better as an encyclopedia than its paper counterparts (while you can probably dislike encyclopedias as a whole, which is a different issue: a really nasty odoring shit is better as a shit than a plastic madeon, but that won't make you like the original the more).

Re:Well, no.

[codeguy007]

A regular encyclopedia is produced by a respected publisher not a bunch of internet geeks who think they know something.

Re:Well, no.

[turbidostato]

"A regular encyclopedia is produced by a respected publisher"

No, it isn't. It is the encyclopedia the one that brings respect to its publisher, provided it earns it, not the other way around.

But then, Wikipedia is in just the same situation.

Re:Well, no.

[rtb61]

She like many others in the same profession are exactlly who they want to be. They know they have a complete lack of integrity and they can be can payed to say or write anything i.e. their word is not their bond, honour for them has no profit and sadly for them, it is really all they are capable of (if they were really capable journalists or writers they would be to embarassed and ashamed to claim that drivel as their own).

They do want to be creative writers and well known jounarlists of exemplarary repute but they are just no where near good enough (and they know it). So togethor with a complete lack of self worth they pretend to be journalists and preach other peoples words as their own (it is all rather sad and you can't help but feel sorry for these pitiful wretches).

Re:wtf?

[TheSloth2001ca]

no that was just you.

without reading the TFA she sure seems somewhat credible... but there may be more to this article than the summary i just read

hmmmm

[eggman95]

this article really didn't inform much.

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Slashdot. It's not about information, it's about potential to inflame 'debate'...

Um, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

DiDio often is written off by the Linux camp as being pro-Microsoft

Um, well, yes, with good reason. When someone performs public relations work for a large corporation on a long-term basis, one then needs to recognize that further publications by this person should be recognized to certainly be further public relations work for the same corporation. As a side note, one might also consider any TCO studies published by Red Hat Corporation to be somewhat biased.

Re:Um, yeah

[dbIII]

DiDio often is written off

After publishing the home address of the Groklaw editor and some unsubstantiated damaging rumors in some sort of one sided cat fight DiDio can be written off as a journalist with professional standards.

Re:Um, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

After publishing the home address of the Groklaw editor and some unsubstantiated damaging rumors in some sort of one sided cat fight DiDio can be written off as a journalist with professional standards.

You're confusing DiDio with O'Gara.

Re:Um, yeah

[DenDave]

I beleive the terms she uses to describe linux users and contributors are "hippie communists".

I am very surprised to learn from Ms. DilDO that RedHat, Novell and IBM are bastions of pot smoking longhaired beatniks....

Why is this even posted on slashdot? Did we miss a post? "Slashdot bought out by Microsoft in a historical deal totalling XXXXbillion$"

Re:Um, yeah

[dbIII]

You're confusing DiDio with O'Gara.

Should always get some sleep before posting to slashdot - so yes, not such a piece of slime but not entirely credible from her past writings. What is the "Yankee Institute" anyway - I always get suspicious of people who wrap themselves in flags to try to appear better.

Re:Um, yeah

[Richard_at_work]

I agree about all the rumours, but home addresses of various people are posted with malicious intent on slashdot all the time - wheres the difference?

Re:Um, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

DiDio often is written off by the Linux camp as being pro-Microsoft/i?

If Slashdot continues publishing such 'scientific studies' "key findings" "objective analysis" etc., very soon, we may have to write off Slashdot as being pro-MS....

Re:Um, yeah

[Angostura]

Oops, you've just posted an unsubstantiated damaging rumor

Re:Um, yeah

[Shaper_pmp]

Seconded. In addition, although it's not quite as overt as the other hatchet-jobs she's written, there were still a couple of things in it that made me wonder. For example:

"Microsoft's Latest News about Microsoft Windows commands 65 to 70 percent of the server operating system market, while the Linux Latest News about Linux share stands at 15 to 20 percent."

Is this true? It's very, very different to the figures I normally se quoted - does it take into account the fact that you can generally run many more "servers" on a linux box than a windows box? (Translates into artificially inflated numbers of Windows boxes sold, to run the same number of actual "server" programs).

Ignorance

[gilesjuk]

If you don't know what is on your network, the chances are someone else handles your network admin. Therefore you should look at how much it costs to employ or pay for that persons services. Generally Windows servers need more attention.

Re:Ignorance

[mumblestheclown]

If you don't know what is on your network, the chances are someone else handles your network admin. Therefore you should look at how much it costs to employ or pay for that persons services.

100% correct.

Generally Windows servers need more attention.

100% back of the envelope, likely wishful thinking, unsubstantiated guess.

Re:Ignorance

[dbIII]

Generally Windows servers need more attention.

In some cases their support costs look lower than they are - a lot of places rightly use the *nix admins as extra staff when a crisis happens. In one place I was employed to set up linux machines and spent 95% of my time supporting a poorly set up (can't blame it on Microsoft) collection of windows machines.

Re:Ignorance

[DenDave]

YMMV?? TCO is imho very dependant on usage. If we are talking about 500 webservers the answer is simple, Linux -hands down- , if we are talking about application servers and network security, I am in my experience inclined to argue for Linux as well but I can appreciate that for an organisation with an existing windows infrastructure the migration costs could be significant. Of course these rational and salient arguments and hence off-topic for miss DilDo...

Re:Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do not know what is on your network..
Ernie Ball had some unused copies of MS software that they didn't know about and were fined $100,000.
Put that in your total-cost-of-ownership and smoke it. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/21/ 0515229&tid=163&tid=109&tid=185

Re:Ignorance

[ajs318]

Generally Windows servers need more attention

Yes, but the most common form of "attention" a Windows server requires is for someone to hike the power lead out, wait thirty seconds, shove it back in again and press the "on" button. You probably could even train an animal to do that. {Any anecdotal evidence ..... "meet Rusty, the four-legged MCSE" sort of thing ..... is welcome .....}

Unix {including Linux} only ever stops working for a Good Reason; so Unix sysadmins actually have to do hard work reading and deciphering error messages and fixing stuff {and Linux admins in particular must add googling for other people's related misfortunes and extrapolating}.

You can always spot the Linux n00bs because they are the ones who reboot a misbehaving box, see exactly the same error messages as before, and think there is something unusual about that.

Re:Ignorance

[Octorian]

And that's a major thing I love about *NIX and hate about Windows...

Deterministic failures.

If something breaks in *NIX, chances are its not a fluke, will break again reliably, and it is obvious where to look for a log message to see what happened. If it is intermittent, it may be hardware related, and the error messages will still be helpful in providing a clue to that effect.

Re:Ignorance

[SgtChaireBourne]

In some cases their support costs look lower than they are ...

Here is an example of that, a unix guy spending hours cleaning up after M$.

A friend of mine hired a linux guy to handle machines for several sites. About 100% of his time spent doing any kind of technical work (maintenance or repair) is spent on repairing the MS-Windows machines, which another group is actually contracted to maintain and repair. However, if he doesn't do it, then it doesn't get done. The linux machines, fortunately outnumber the MS-Windows machines significantly at those sites and he only has to touch them when he wants to try a new distro. He's always got one machine for 'experiments' at each site, to get feedback from customers on new programs, distros, or configurations.

Fortunately for my friend this fellow doesn't mind too much and has nerves of steel, a necessity since he rose up from a MS-Windows background.

Re:Ignorance

[Bimo_Dude]

100% back of the envelope, likely wishful thinking, unsubstantiated guess.

That could be, but not in my experience. At a really large company where I used to work, the ratio of Windows admins to servers is much lower that that of *NIX admins to servers. There were 10 Windows admins for about 200 servers, while there were 20 *NIX admins for about 5000 servers.

Maybe it just depends on the environment.

Re:Ignorance

[LizardKing]

Ernie Ball had some unused copies of MS software that they didn't know about and were fined $100,000.

Damn. So that's why a new scratchplate for my Stingray cost so much.

Re:Ignorance

[vettemph]

Actually, Ernie Ball has lot of extra copies of Windows since they ditched MS for Linux an recouped that 80,000 in the first year. There are NO MS PCs at Ernie Ball.

Re:Ignorance

[HangingChad]

100% back of the envelope, likely wishful thinking, unsubstantiated guess.

Perhaps, but it's in line with my experience. For me it's a bit simpler, just go through and count the trouble tickets. Systems hosted on Windows machines get twice as many complaints about outtages or down time than the sites running on a LAMP platform. If I'm going to get woken up in the middle of the night, it's almost always a Windows box.

Sure you can argue it's the application or the coding skill and it doesn't take into account the popularity and traffic of the application, but that would seem to even out across 30 or 40 apps.

At least across the companies I work with, the Windows servers need more attention. And they need to be rebooted more often, rebuilt from scratch more often and they will slow down over time. I'm not sure how you can label my observation wishful thinking. It is what it is. I run Linux at home and my personal web sites on LAMP servers because I don't have to dork with them as much.

I wonder when the last time Didiot actually had any hands on experience with server? Armchair quarterbacks aren't limited to Sunday afternoons.

Re:Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes the problem is caused by the remains of something holding a lock. I find the easiest way to fix that is to reboot (which will clear the lock). There has to be a better fix point, but it is too hard to find.

I'm not a n00b, I just don't have time to find a better way.

Re:Ignorance

[deaddrunk]

The ratio of Windows admins to servers is a lot higher: 1:20 as opposed to 1:250. I'm guessing it's a typo ;-)

Re:Ignorance

[Bimo_Dude]

Yes - you are correct; thank you for pointing that out. I did mean that the ratio of Windows admins to servers was higher. Not enought coffee this morning ;)

Re:wtf?

[Agret]

Apparently the summary was TFA. Not very high calibur stuff either.

"Key findings"?

[altgrr]

There were no real "key findings" in the article. Is it really worthy of Slashdot to mention a survey whose outcome was "well, it depends"? Never mind that, was it really worth writing the original article?

Either the author had nothing better to write about, or they felt like inflating their ego a little by assuming that people in business are pretty thick and need to be told the blindingly obvious.

Re:"Key findings"?

[Psiren]

...assuming that people in business are pretty thick and need to be told the blindingly obvious.

Bingo! We have a winner! Of course, not every business is like this, but a fair number of them are. It may be that they've grown too quickly and have not been able to obtain or keep the necessary expertise in house. Nevertheless, sometimes these places really do need to be told how to run their IT systems.

Re:"Key findings"?

[-brazil-]

"well, it depends" is usually the most truthful answer - no matter what the question is. If it is accompanied by a good explanation on WHAT "it" depends, it is usually also the most useful answer.

Obviously, it is not the most simple answer. Unfortunately, most people prefer simple but misleading (or downright wrong) answers to correct ones.

Re:"Key findings"?

[jkrise]

I would go further than that. The author seems to imply that it's very easy to calculate the TCO of a Windows box, network or server. Far from the truth. It's difficult to factor in Subscription (Dis)Advantage, countless patches, network bandwidth costs for patching, separate servers for logon, mail, proxy, file etc.

At the end of the article, the conclusion is "Buying software without analysing all this is like buying blind"... atleast with Linux on the servers, the cost of the decision is negligible. With Microsoft servers and services, the initial costs are high. And the headaches are just starting.

Re:"Key findings"?

[jellomizer]

Either the author had nothing better to write about, or they felt like inflating their ego a little by assuming that people in business are pretty thick and need to be told the blindingly obvious.

Well business people are sometimes pretty thick, for example for a company that would be better off with Linux. But the PHB uses Windows and had a bad experience with Unix 20 years ago. The idea of him switching to Linux is just outrageous, because in his mind he is still thinking of all the expenses of using a priority Unix system from 1985, which had a high TCO, and massive vender lock in for both hardware and software, and didn't work that great either. A study that show that Linux could be a good competitor and in some cases could be a better TCO then Windows could cause him pause and at least ask some guy in his IT Staff about it, and probably slowly change his perceptions about it.

Or there could be the other way a Linux/Unix shop who would be better served with Windows. The IT staff has full decision control and the Boss lets them do their thing. So the IT staff is using Linux because it is cool and wasting a lot of time figuring out things, and not documenting what they figured out, that are easily done in Windows (*Cough* File *Cough* and *Cough* Print *Cough* Sharing *Cough* ) Now the Boss is smart enough not to read the rags where Microsoft says they are better TCO but if an independent group says well it depends it might make him go to the IT staff Why is it taking you a team of 10 at 20 an hour an hour 5 hours to do a job which I can do on windows in 5 minutes.

Peoples egos get in the way of blindingly obvious either their love for one platform prevents them for looking at the advantages of alternatives or their old hatred of a platform prevents them to see if they changed.

Re:"Key findings"?

[altgrr]

I think we agree - I'd have had no problem with a well-justified, carefully-explained "well, it depends on this, this and this". To just say "well, it depends" is lazy and unhelpful.

Of course, it could be an undercover Microsoft advertisement too, seeing as they're always banging on about providing lower TCO. Perhaps they're just hoping that managers will see an "independent" article as giving credibility to their claims... whoops, must keep control of my cynicism gland ;)

Re:"Key findings"?

[Magada]

Ahem. The article is actually a shameless plug for DD's employer, the Yankee group, which offers IT consultancy 'n stuff. No more, no less.

Re:"Key findings"?

[I confirm I'm not a]

Is it really worthy of Slashdot to mention a survey whose outcome was "well, it depends"?

I'm as sick of Yankee Group hype as much as anyone else, but to be fair to Slashdot I feel that in this one case it was worth mentioning: Laura DiDio has a history of making clue-free statements about Free Software; in this article she appears to have clued-up. That in itself was worth reporting[1].

...but aye, apart from that this is more of the same from a shill working for a shill-firm.

[1] Though strangely I don't feel I'll need to be informed when she issues her next clue-free puff piece.

Re:"Key findings"?

[swv3752]

Until the Windows sharing suddenly stops working.

Re:"Key findings"?

[DavidTC]

I think more people need to comment on how Windows file sharing randomly doesn't work on small networks.

Yeah, it works great if you can afford a WINS server, but as everyone who's ever had a LAN party knows, it sometimes magically fails on small networks.

Why we write off Laura Didio

[Anonymous Coward]

Criticism of a previous Didio study related to Linux TCO...

Laura Didio whines that slashdot does not like her...

Quote from wikipedia by Didio: "The thing about Linux is, you can talk about a free, open operating system all you want, but you can't take that idea of free and open and put it into a capitalist system and maintain it as though it is some kind of hippie commune or ashram, because if you can do it like that, at that point I'm like, 'Pass the hookah please!'". And on another occasion she followed up: "I'm all for open source, and competition serves everyone's interest. But if Linux is really to take its place alongside Windows... then the vendors in this space cannot act like a bunch of hippies in a '60s commune or ashram. There really is no such thing as a free lunch." ... does this sound professional to you?

Collection of Laura Didio quotes, compiled by Groklaw, on the subject of Didio insisting that she'd seen the linux-sco code comparison and it contained clearly copied code. This was posted, mind you, on the day that the judge ordered SCO to either provide the evidence linux contained copied sco code or drop those accusations from their lawsuit, and SCO resonded by dropping those accusations. In other words, the evidence never existed. There was never any copied code and SCO has as good as admitted so in court by their refusal to specify what the copied code was when the court ordered them to.

Laura Didio has made it clear she is not someone worth giving the slightest bit of attention or media press to. She has in the past shown a complete lack of any idea of rigor in compiling or presenting a study, as well as a willingness to both mislead and outright lie. This is not someone who knows how to do journalism, or how to do an informed study. This is someone who knows how to do one thing and one thing only, and that is shill for Microsoft when Microsoft pays them to. Right now she is shilling for Microsoft. Microsoft press releases released from Microsoft itself may occasionally contain good points or true statements, such as "Microsoft is a company located in Redmond". However, even when this is the case they don't get printed on the front page. Why should Microsoft press releases released through the front of Didio be treated any different?

Re:Why we write off Laura Didio

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. Much of this does not sound professional. Yet, many of the posters here are in fact professionals In fact, during my posts, I allow sloppy writing and spelling to invade. The reason is that this is a steam blow-off place. I write here what I would not write at work. I say things that I would just keep quiet on at work. Many others are the same. But I do not make up crap to promote my job. Laura Dido does.

Re:Why we write off Laura Didio

[ryanov]

Even so -- we aren't paid columnists... I wouldn't expect a forum to be of professional quality.

Re:Why we write off Laura Didio

[CyberGarp]

Damn! I've been going to these Linux User Groups for sometime and noboby passed the hookah to me. Stingy bastards.

Re:Why we write off Laura Didio

[laffer1]

I just want to comment on the last part of that quoute "There really is no such thing as a free lunch". I don't think anyone truely belives that all OSS is free as in money! I mean lets face it, aside from ubuntu who gives out free cds you have to at least pay for bandwith to download software. If you go on the economist view that time is money, obviously initial investment into learning/setting up OSS is higher than using windows or OS X. Even with ubuntu, what are they doing with your postal address, etc?

Lets look at REAL total cost of ownership for a minute. What actually costs money?

1. Acquiring the software. This could mean buying it from a store, downloading it if its OSS (bandwith fees and blank media) or some closed source download service (sun store, microsft licensing, etc) Licensing is included here.

2. Paying someone to set it up for you (IT worker)

3. Maintaining the software with security patches, updates, adjustments, etc.

4. Tech support cost to answer questions about the software for your end users.

I've never seen an unbiased survey on TCO including all these points. Its hard enough to get unbiased surveys.

My personal view is that Microsoft is terrible on points 1 and 3 whereas linux is terrible on points 2 and 4. The reason we can't get a definitive answer is that each company has a different situation so the costs for each point change. What is correct for company A is not right for company B.

Open source software will never win out on point 2 (setup) but I do believe that ease of use is the key here. Linux distros are easier to use than in the past. When I started on Redhat 5, it wasn't pleasant to setup. The last Redhat install I did was a joke (redhat 9). I think windows is harder to install and thats a no brainer. Obviously gentoo isn't so good on installation. If you look at the state of Gnome and KDE, its usable by everyday people under a linux distrobution now. I think its almost usable under a BSD. Some utilities for administration and preferences are buggy or do not work properly on a BSD currently in Gnome at least.

The biggest set back to Linux now is that a beginner searches to web to find the following:

1. Fedora is 4 cds!
2. Suse costs money. (yes its going OSS and you can download it if you're really lucky on their ftp) Its 90 dollars at the local best buy!
3. Mandrake (well whatever they call themselves now) costs money. Again I suspect you can download it via ftp, but lamers don't know that.

Any other distro is marked as too hard on many sites.

If you go to Redhat.com, you see 300 dollar price tags on free software. This discourages corporate adoption as CEOs see this and not Gentoo or Debian. Windows costs 300 dollars and not for corporate users with volume licensing!

Re:Why we write off Laura Didio

[killjoe]

ubuntu, ubuntu, ubuntu, ubuntu, ubuntu.

OK?

Re:Why we write off Laura Didio

[Anonymous Coward]

My personal view is that Microsoft is terrible on points 1 and 3 whereas linux is terrible on points 2 and 4. The reason we can't get a definitive answer is that each company has a different situation so the costs for each point change. What is correct for company A is not right for company B.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Microsoft is terrible on point 4: buy a system with OEM Windows preinstalled? Call M$ for support and they tell you to call the vendor. You bought a HP? You'll be speaking with a clueless "tech" (because all the educated Indians got smart and came here on H1-B or L1 visas to earn real money) following a script with the final resolution to each and every problem being either "Call Microsoft" (at which point Microsoft tells you to call HP) or "reformat and reinstall" (oops, and did you already do that twice? Time to call Microsoft again to Activate windows.)

Bought a whitebox with Windows preinstalled? Most OEMs are no better. Most speak fluent English but are clueless and don't even have a script to help you.

Want support from Microsoft for your OEM windows? $125 please,

Take it to Best Buy to get the problem fixed? They're going to tell you that you need a new hard drive, oh and by the way, it's going to be three weeks before you get your machine back.

The real problem? The power supply cable came loose, and the HDD is just fine, thankyouvermuch. Fixed in 15 minutes, Have a nice day!

Linux is great on point 4. Practically every distribution offers telephone support (at REASONABLE costs), mailing lists, plus there are many messageboards and howto articles to help you out. Not only that, but the man pages that get installed with the system are extensive.

Re:Why we write off Laura Didio

[turbidostato]

"My personal view is that Microsoft is terrible on points 1 and 3 whereas linux is terrible on points 2 and 4"

Your personal view is flawed.

Microsoft is terrible on points 1, 2, 3 and 4. Let's see:

1/ Aquiring the software: Microsoft isn't cheap, is it? It is not only that it isn't cheap, but it is a legal nigthmare to follow its lot of different license schemes. Of course, any suitable open source product is much better on this aspect.

2/ Paying someone to set it up. Of course, Microsoft doesn't pay for it. That Microsoft is easy to setup is nothing but a myth. Except on the most trivial scenarios (where any alternative is equally easy to set up) Microsoft products are *extremely* stubborn about how things have to be deployed. For the most part, it is the Microsoft way or no way. Any unix-like environment is much easier to set up the way it fits and much easier for automation and further maintenance. Probably a Microsoft-savvy monkey is cheaper than a seasoned unix sysadmin, but as you can learn for instance, on the recent article about Ms Exchange software alternatives, that kind of monkeys are much more expensive on the long run, since they can't do much more that click here and there on the wizzards with not too much knowledge about what's really going on. And then, a seasoned Microsoft sysadmin which, more or less, can develop and maintain a stable and functional environment (usually over a mountain of quite expensive hardware and a hill of not so cheap third-party software) is not any cheaper nor any more productive than a seasoned unix sysadmin, so there goes "IT worker" advantage.

3/ Maintaining software: Microsoft has an outstanding record regarding patches that break systems by introducing new bugs and non-desired behaviour changes. On the other hand it is popular knowledge you *will* have non-trivial problems when upgrading any major component (ie. a lot of short companies depend on Access apps that break each time Access is upgraded, for instance), and that upgrading any major component will lead inexorably to the upgrading of all the others on a short time-frame, so making point 1 even worse. Even "evilesque" companies like Oracle or -arrgghh... SCO have better records regarding maintainability, not to talk about the wider alternatives open source brings to this field.

4/ Desktop support: From the very beginning the non-told motto from Microsoft is "even a dumbass can use our products"; the net result is that Microsoft users tend to behave as dumbasses because of this very fact. Entry on Ms systems is quite easy but they don't promote users to learn how the system works (well, it is not that it would be of any use; after all, next version will behave quite differently from the end-user perspective), thus increasing desktop assistance costs on the long run. Again, any unix-like system promotes user's knowledge far more.

"I've never seen an unbiased survey on TCO including all these points. Its hard enough to get unbiased surveys."

All in all, the expectable results arising is that for a company without legacy systems, provided software that fits the needs is available, an open source unix-like solution is clearly the way to go, even without the need to make the numbers.

Of course, once your scenario is not as "pristine" as the one above, your mileage may vary.

"Open source software will never win out on point 2 (setup)"

Open source software already DO win on point 2 nine times out of ten; you surely are talking about what you ignore.

"The biggest set back to Linux now is that a beginner searches to web to find the following:"

We are talking here about professional/corporate environments. A beginner simply has no place here, and his opinions no weight.

"This discourages corporate adoption as CEOs..."

Second mistake. It is not about CEOs, it is about CIOs, and they should know better. Being a CIO an incompetent won't make Microsoft a better choice but only a most common choice by uncompetent people.

Unknown != suboptimal

[saigon_from_europe]

Chances are, ... because ignorance of the core TCO tenets means that your business is not getting the most out of its networks.

Why are people obsessed with measuring everything? Why does she believes that if something is unknown that it is suboptimal by default.

For example: we have 3 servers (all Windows) in my company. Do we use them optimally? Probably, since we cannot replace them with any other software (to my great sorrow). Do we know how much each server costs us? No, and we will never be able to calculate that. Niether we care, as long as they do their job.

Why should I measure something which is hardly measurable just to be able to say that I use something in right way?

This is typical article where highly payed "analysts" try to spit obvious things in order to sound smart. As usual, they spit crap, but being so "well" informed about the subject, they even don't notice that.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people obsessed with measuring everything?

Most people like to count their money and feed their family.

For example: we have 3 servers (all Windows) in my company. Do we use them optimally? Probably, since we cannot replace them with any other software (to my great sorrow). Do we know how much each server costs us? No, and we will never be able to calculate that. Niether we care, as long as they do their job.

Why should I measure something which is hardly measurable just to be able to say that I use something in right way?

Your job exists because somebody IS counting, measuring, calculating, caring, etc.

This attitude of "probably, why?, who cares?, who knows?" is a major problem in the IT world. It is quite common among programmers, IS folks, etc. and causes everyone (up and down the chain) great pain when people with this attitude get into "management" positions.

If the janitors can have their performance measured down to the cost of cleaning a toilet, why can't the IT folks and their whiz-bang computers?

IT service companies/personnel that conquer this will succeed. The others will lose their job to hungry=competitive folks in India.

FYI - Non-IT-background management is becoming increasingly aware of what is going on behind those IT doors. I'm not IT nor IS, but I do have enough background and interest to be reading Slashdot, and there's lots more like me. We are AWARE. We are WATCHING.

Have a nice day at work, and smile when you see your boss. It might be me.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[lord sibn]

I suspect you would care more deeply about how much money those machines were costing you if you had to pay the bills out of your own pocket. A bit of perspective here.

Businesses are in business for one reason alone: making as much money as possible so the senior officers can go home to their cheating wives and roll around in big piles of money. All other objectives (for example, having a computer network) are completely incidental expenses to that end. If maintaining the network costs them $70,000 in salary alone for one guy, who could be replaced for a guy who would keep the machines running (hey, what else are they there for?) for $50,000, then these senior officers need to know about it.

That is the only way they can go tell their shareholders that they are indeed sleeping on big piles of money and rolling their cigarettes in $100 bills.

The business that doesn't care about that "meager" $20,000 difference is the .com of the 90s.

I work with much smaller sums of money, but the difference in profits is made up for in volume of product moved. It is my job to balk at even a $0.25 discrepancy in invoicing. 25 cents is really nothing in itself, but 20 such small discrepancies per day would pile up over the year to equal $1825. "Chump change," surely. But you save $1825 here, $20,000 there, and squeeze an extra $1000 from... Before long, you realise that you spent the last ten years losing $100,000 per year that you could have kept.

That, my friend, is why the "people" are obsessed with measuring everything. $1 million is not a small sum of money to any business that takes money seriously.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[mwvdlee]

I do agree that there can be measured a great deal more in IT than is being done now, however:

One toilet is about the same as any other toilet.

A program is completely unique (otherwise it wouldn't need to be build) and thus contains many uncertainties.

It's more like having a meeting: If everything goes right, the meeting is finished within the planned hour. If people start having unexpectedly long discussions, either the meeting will drag on hours on end or the meeting is cut short before every detail is known.
In a meeting, a missing detail might not cause trouble. In a program, a missing detail will stop the entire program from working so the only real option is just to keep on going.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[Anonymous Coward]

It all revolves around how much you can SAVE by substituting another brand or supplier. Inability to switch, cost the dinosaurs dearly.

Many do, all the time, and bring in experts to make it happen. Only fools tolerate price increases, without thought, and bigger fools not notice long term real 10% pa compound increases, year after year, and not act to stop the rot.

The above poster is halfway there , a gut estimate that 3 servers don't warrant shopping or further investigation. However, at some point, mixes work.
A title like 'Businesses slow to trim IT costs' is right on the money. With three year loyalty 'lock ins' but no 'I smell a rat' nerves, looser businesses deserve to feel the chill winds of global competition. TCO may mean nothing much, but it is deadly when your competition has a lower (and falling) TCO.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[saigon_from_europe]

Why are people obsessed with measuring everything?

Most people like to count their money and feed their family.

My point was most people like to count their money instead to spent that time to feed their families.

Calculating expences is very complex task. My brother works in company that makes software for such purposes, and I can tell you that even in best case calculation will be very arbitrary. We pay rent for the office. We have products A and B, and we want to know how much each of them costs us. How much of the rent should be added to product A and how much to product B? And so on.

It is next to impossible to calculate how much money we spend on server A, B or C. Yes they cost money, but if there is nothing I can do about them, I really don't want to waste my time about it.

If I use BSD machine as firewall/router, Linux as web server and other Linux as file/print server and Windows server for crappy win-only application which I cannot replace in any reasonable sceanario, I am very confident that if I am not in optimal point, I am very close to it. No need for making expensive and imprecise calculation just to find out the obvious thruth.

To make this long story short: from logical point - if you don't know what is something it does not imply it is bad. And that was DiDio's point I cited and the point I tried to prove as obviously wrong. As most obvious example there was my office where we cannot move to any other architecture, so it was optimal by default.

I agree that measuring is good, but it is not good always, since it costs money, and some results are simply unuseful.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[Kjella]

I work with much smaller sums of money, but the difference in profits is made up for in volume of product moved. It is my job to balk at even a $0.25 discrepancy in invoicing. 25 cents is really nothing in itself, but 20 such small discrepancies per day would pile up over the year to equal $1825. "Chump change," surely. But you save $1825 here, $20,000 there, and squeeze an extra $1000 from... Before long, you realise that you spent the last ten years losing $100,000 per year that you could have kept.

Yes, but remember that the average US wage is 18$/hr or so. That means that if it on average takes you longer than one minute and twelve seconds to correct one mistake, you are losing money. That is, assuming you do nothing but punch a number to correct it. If you have to make another invoice, it'll cost you far far more.

It's not "another $100,000 you could have kept" if there's another "$200,000 you could have earned" by making billable hours or sales in the time you sat in the back room chasing down cents. Yes, all the big companies are pennypinchers but they let the computers chase down all the pennies, not costly people time.

I have a friend that works in a huge company, I won't name which. He found a bookkeeping error of about $3000 (money they should have recieved) and they basicly fixed it and shrugged at it. And they still turn a damn solid profit, because they're damn focused on what it is they're supposed to do, run the business, make sales.

Kjella

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[SilentChris]

"For example: we have 3 servers (all Windows) in my company. Do we use them optimally? Probably, since we cannot replace them with any other software (to my great sorrow). Do we know how much each server costs us? No, and we will never be able to calculate that. Niether we care, as long as they do their job."

To be honest, I don't think you're in a position to really judge. 3 Windows servers (you don't mention how many of other OSes) implies a relatively small company.

Try working at a company with revenues in the billions. When I make a decision, it literally affects thousands of people and downtime has the potential to cost millions.

We've been relatively lucky with our Windows servers -- they've stayed up. But to be frank, the Windows guys are a hell of a lot cheaper than the UNIX guys. We have one aging Sun box, for example. You'd think it'd be cheap to maintain, but the guys who runs it gets an annual salary as much as twice the Windows guys. When that box goes down (and it does -- hard sometimes), it costs more to bring it back up thanks to that guy's salary.

You say things are "hardly measurable". They are certainly measurable. If your file server(s) went down tomorrow, how much client work would be lost by not being done? Think about the wasted salaries of everyone using your box. Joe in accounting makes X hundred thousand, Mary makes Y hundred thousand, etc. If you're just looking at licensing costs of the OS, you're missing a much bigger picture.

Say it with me: it's IT's JOB to calculate the worth of their department, same as any other. If we don't do it, no one else will.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[stinky wizzleteats]

Why should I measure something which is hardly measurable just to be able to say that I use something in right way?

We read the article, which roughly paraphrases to "There is scary doubt", and the first thing that comes to our mind is to measure and analyze to remove the doubt. We are technologists. The article is not indended for us. A manager reads this, and the first thing that comes to their mind is bringing in outside consultants to assuage the fear.

Now, who does Didio work for again?

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I don't think it really makes a great deal of difference to a three server organisation. It will make a massive difference to a 300 or 3000 server organisation, where the ratio of people to hardware resources is so much lower, and where small per-server differences become important.

e.g suppose you have a 10 minute job to do on your fileserver - you don't think twice about the cost. Now suppose you have 3000 fileservers. You've got youself a man-month task if it's done manually, costing you something like $5000.

Suppose you run IT for a small estate agent with 12 staff and the database goes down. Most likely the agents could continue working for a couple of days, and then you start impacting their daily take, which may be a few thousand dollars. It's not worth you spending money on redundant systems, and expert 24x7 support. Now suppose that you support a trading desk with twelve dealers that does $100m profit/year. The database goes down during trading hours you're looking at around $650 per *minute* or $40k per day.

Now does TCO seem like something worth calculating?

2. Whilst if you don't know something it is not always bad, this is very often the case. Management consultants have built an entire industry around the premise "what's measured is managed". Generally the cost incurred in business measuring something is worth it.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[Bimo_Dude]

if you don't know what is something it does not imply it is bad.

You hit the nail on the head with that. This article is a classic example:

1. Be a consulting company (analysis).
2. Exploit the human trait, fear of the unknown, by writing a report regarding TCO (Win -vs- *NIX), and emphasizing that you can't know your TCO unless you know everything about your environment.
3. Post article to /. (where some interested PHB's may lurk), knowing that your submission will likely be accepted due to the "flamewar factor."
4. ???
5. Profit!

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[strider44]

Is it just me or is Microsoft relying on a Catch 22 situation in Linux to survive in the server market? Their advertising seems to be saying that "yeah, their software is better, but because everyone uses ours everyone knows how to use it so you can pay them less". I'm not sure that this is entirely smart as once the use and knowledge reaches a critical mass then things might collapse with the "yeah their software is better" implication.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just you.

Nowhere does MS say "their software is better."

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[gnuorder]

"We have one aging Sun box, for example. You'd think it'd be cheap to maintain, but the guys who runs it gets an annual salary as much as twice the Windows guys. When that box goes down (and it does -- hard sometimes), it costs more to bring it back up thanks to that guy's salary."

If the unix guy is on salary, why would it cost more for him to actually do what he was hired to do? It should cost the same for him to sit there and watch the server or do something when it crashes. I do agree if your sun server goes down and you have no backup system, it will cost you more in downtime and perhaps hardware. Since it's Sun, it would cost more than a windows box to replace, perhaps.

As for his salary being twice that of the windows admins, you are right, they are more expensive. That is supply and demand. Most windows admins are cheaper because anyone can reinstall windows. Top notch windows admins likely cost almost as much as unix admins, I assume. It's just cheaper to reinstall than to actually figure out what went wrong to prevent it again because you need 5 or more admins for every 100 windows boxes. I'm sure your unix admin could easily handle the 3 windows servers if they were converted to linux.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[empvirus]

The reason why Microsoft is focused on this whole TCO thing is because they really think that when some CEO of whatever company sees this, he'll be all like, "Hey! something cheaper!=more profit!" Anyway, it seems to work, because M$ has been doing this for awhile. Either that, or they just don't know when to give up. I can't read the minds of company CEO's right now, so I can't tell you the answer to that.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[51mon]

Last time I looked SUN hardware was remarkably cheap, certainly competitive in the rackmount area with generic x86 servers.

Sure it gets expensive at the big end of the market, but very few organisation actually need big hardware like that. Certainly far fewer than think they need it.

A cynic might suggest it only gets sold to IT directors who use to work on multimillion pound machines, and thus think anything less that 250,000USD must be very suspect.

My experience is Windows administration is a lot harder than Unix.

Unix/Linux boxes tend to do what you tell them, and just not work till you get it right.

Windows boxes will often kind of work if you clicked roughly the right buttons, and ticked roughly the right boxes, only to discover a few days later you missed something vital, or you need some obscure registry settings to make it work correctly.

Windows boxes will then suddenly do something weird, and apparently unrelated, and a few hours of downtime later you find the relevant knowledgebase article, and think "what the hell?", or "why me?".

Just compare the complexity of something like name resolution.

*nix - check /etc/hosts then ask the DNS (maybe ask NIS if the admins are insanely stupid or keen, possibly search some extra domains in the DNS if the admin is lazy).

Windows - ponder my registry a bit, decide what sort of node I am and in what order to do things, check hosts file, check lmhosts, check all the DNS servers in case the admin is clueless about DNS, ask a WINS (or maybe something did that for it already) server, shout in case anyone around knows the answer. Oh time to register my name in the DNS again. Is my domain "shortname" or "shortname.ads.example.com"?

The only reason Windows admins get paid less is there are a lot of people who think they are Windows admins who depress the market prices.

Most of the really bright people I know try desparately not to be Windows admins, because bashing your head against Redmond's connundrums on a daily basis isn't fun, and occaisonally nerve racking. Interspersed with remarkably long and dull periods of reinstalling, and/or rebooting.

As such I'm sure in a more developed market you would have to pay a premium for Windows admins.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[lord sibn]

What you are saying makes a lot of sense. Quite a bit more than the comment to which I had originally replied.

That said, I don't get paid $18 an hour. And I am over here in the USA. I don't remember saying I worked in IT/IS, and (mistakenly, it seems) believed that pointing out the difference in scale was sufficient to convey that point. Mea culpa.

Re:Unknown != suboptimal

[dodobh]

Unix on a small scale is expensive. As the scale of operations increases, Windows gets more and more expensive.

Unix admins scale better.

Re:Linux if you got money, Windows if you got more

[be_kul]

"When will they ever learn? When will the ever learn?" Linux is not so much about the money, but about freedom. And freedom has no price - I know what I am speaking about!
Breaking this basic idea down to the question of money and business means to ask: what will your TCO be in an potentially unlimited time when all your data belong to a closed source software? What does it cost you if your data get stolen through trojan horses (new or built-in) in your closed source software?
It's about freedom, (wo)man!

This isn't exactly breaking news.

[mikeophile]

Ms DiDio's report has been here since November 2004.

Re:This isn't exactly breaking news.

[nazh]

Especially check out the video with Laura Didio that is linked from that site. She does not sound very neutural to me. http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/windowsserversystem/fac ts/videos/yankee_group_laura_didio.wmv

Unobjectionable but meaningless

[Mostly a lurker]

I am one of those the author referred to who does not rate Laura DiDio's writing highly. Her latest article has no material I really take objection to. Actually, the latest article has no material. What does she say: a Yankee study revealed that no good data on the relative TCO of Windows and Linux servers was available; the TCO will vary from organisation to organisation; without knowing the TCO, it is hard to make an informed decision.

Has anyone succeeded in resolving their problem of which OS to use based on this insightful article?

Re:Unobjectionable but meaningless

[Knome_fan]

"Has anyone succeeded in resolving their problem of which OS to use based on this insightful article?"

Sure.
If I understand this outstanding article correctly it all boils down to word.

Re:Unobjectionable but meaningless

[MathFox]

I wonder how Kees Agelink was able to extract some average TCO numbers from the Gartner database for organisations using Windows vs. organisations using Linux and present us his findings at the may 27, 2004 NLUUG conference, while Didio seems unable to do a similar database lookup. Didio is the bigger TCO expert, isn't she.

A summary of Kees's results for the curious: Linux is a few 100 dollars/PC/yr cheaper than Windows. It will take more than a year to recover the cost of migrating away from Windows to Linux.

Re:Unobjectionable but meaningless

[surprise_audit]

Actually, this could be a useful article - any pointy-haired boss who's banging on about TCO of Windows being lower than any other OS can be shown this article, which clearly states that you can't know if you don't have the measurements... :)

Re:Unobjectionable but meaningless

[Danathar]

Her article translates to....

"you can say absolutely nothing about that which you know nothing about"

This is NOT the equivelant of some sage wizdom from the Delphi Oracle...

Re:Unobjectionable but meaningless

[jrexilius]

From TFA "I applaud the passion of the software developers and I.T. administrators who pour their time, effort, energy and enthusiasm into their work. But I abhor it when the passion disintegrates into mudslinging and counterproductive internecine warfare."

My complaint about this article is that she attempts to say that a purely technical debate, wether emotionally charged or not, is mudslinging.

This is a loser's ploy, admittedly, but it is also a disservice to try and dismiss much of the heated debate because of the emotion involved.

Attempting to get the reader to block their minds to arguments in a debate is a last ditch effort but still just as biased as her previous articles.

Re:Unobjectionable but meaningless

[DickBreath]

Compare this to her brilliantly penetrating insight about SCO's delisting. About the delisting she said: clearly it is a red light.

If one were going to invest in a stock that was about to get delisted, one should consult DiDio's brilliant insightful analysis to know that a pending stock symbol delisting is a red light and that one might not wish to invest.

At first

[HateBreeder]

I wasn't sure why Dido was reviewing linux...
I mean, she sings so well, why the sudden career change?

Re:At first

[gowen]

I ... want to thank you,
For giving us the best post,
In this thread.

Re:At first

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I mean, she sings so well, why the sudden career change?

Because her publisher started using "copy protection" technology on her second album, meaning that I can't play it in my car CD player because it's not a real CD? It therefore became the first not-quite-CD I ever took back to the shop for a refund.

Sorry, it's off-topic, but you did ask.

In related news...

[zlogic]

Zotob Worm Hits CNN and Goes Global
Windows 2000 machines are infected. Linux and Unix aren't.
I clearly see what that woman means.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other related news, Windows 2000 is a six year old OS. Current versions are unaffected.

Re:In related news...

[paranoidgeek]

In more related news, it took Microsoft 6 years to fix a critical bug in the server version of their OS.

Re:In related news...

[rikkards]

Mod parent down. Actual title for article should be "CNN IT dept gets turfed for being incompetent and not patching their workstations"

Re:In related news...

[jkrise]

In further unrelated news, Windows 2000 is still supported by Microsoft. And further, Unix is more than 30 years old. Linux is more than a decade old. And further yet, upgrading desktops from Win98 to WinXP hasn't resulted in any great benefit to the end users - worse, it calls for needless upgrade in the hardware resources.

I can go on and on...

Re:In related news...

[paranoidgeek]

If a driver was to be killed when his breaks failed, would you then say "But {companyname} stated 6 days earlier that they were doing a recall so it is the drivers fault for not taking his vehicle off the road at a cost $500/day because he runs a home business" ?

Windows machines are the only things that require you to have the machines patched quickly otherwise they die/turn into zombies. And users dont like it and will change to other OSs.

Re:In related news...

[Hungry Admin]

The blackhats managed to release their exploits less than 4 days after the announcement of the vulnerability. Yikes!

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're still using the same version of Linux that was released a decade ago are you? Are commercial Unix vendors still using the original version of Unix written 30 years ago, with no changes to it whatsoever? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Re:In related news...

[gbjbaanb]

Windows machines are the only things that require you to have the machines patched quickly otherwise they die/turn into zombies

Unlike Linux machines that need regular patching to prevent them being rooted? There's no difference between any OS when it comes to a security hole, you patch it or you run the risk of being hacked.

For your driving analogy - if a manufacturer issued a recall, they are warning you about a problem. They can then turn round and say 'we told you not to use the brakes', but the driver obviously knows better and went ahead anyway. If I told you not to get in a car because its brakes weren't working, and you did anyway, would it be my fault?

Re:In related news...

[ChocoladeHeathshield]

In other news, many large government agencies have thousands of computers running Windows 2000, and cannot rollout an XP upgrade this morning. The world is larger than your basement.

Re:In related news...

[eMartin]

"I can go on and on..."

Please do.

We're listening.

Really.

Re:In related news...

[slaughts]

Unlike Linux machines that need regular patching to prevent them being rooted? There's no difference between any OS when it comes to a security hole, you patch it or you run the risk of being hacked.

There is a big difference. Most Linux vulnerabilities require someone to get local access to the machine first. The various Windows worms seem to be able to find an easy way onto any unpatched system remotely.

Re:In related news...

[GweeDo]

In other related news, Linux Kernel 2.2 is unaffected and is 6+ years old. What was your point again? Even if it is 6 years old, people use it...a lot of people in fact. It needs to be watched and maintained by its creators just as much as Windows XP.

Re:In related news...

[thisissilly]

You seem to be suffering from an off-by-one error.

2005 (the current year) - 2000 (the year of Windows 2000's release) = 5, not 6.

Re:In related news...

[gbjbaanb]

No, I run a Linux webserver so I know first hand what could go wrong.

The list of things to uninstall, protect, and configure is quite long for a new server. Not only that, once installed there are a lot of patches that are required. All of these things apply to remote systems.

Sure, people can say 'but theyre vulnerabilities in Apache, or PHP or xyz', but the same people don't make the same distinction between 'Windows' vulnerabilities and 'IIS' ones.

At the end of the day, I have to protect my servers from remote exploits and if just 1 gets through its very bad news for me.

Re:In related news...

[Kafka_Canada]

You're trying to be clever by pointing out that no one uses 30-year old versions of Unix, but that doesn't matter at all since we know that many people do use Win2000. And for what it's worth, many people also continue to use Linux and Unix from the same period as w2k.

Christ, when did people start becoming so stupid?

Re:In related news...

[sheldon]

In even further unrelated news... Linux versions released in 2000 are no longer supported.

And further yet, upgrading desktops from six year old Linux versions to new Linux versions still results in a version of Linux and even worse it uses ever more hardware to perform the same basic tasks.

I don't want to go on and on...

Re:In related news...

[HermanAB]

Well, Unix is a 35 year old OS, no versions are affected...

So, your point was what exactly?

Re:In related news...

[k12linux]

Unlike Linux machines that need regular patching to prevent them being rooted? There's no difference between any OS when it comes to a security hole, you patch it or you run the risk of being hacked.

True enough on the surface. One difference, however, is that I rarely think twice before installing a patch/update to my Linux systems because the chances of it breaking something are virtually non existent and backing them out is almost trivial.

I a bit less aprehensive of rolling out patches on netware. Things do break sometimes but fixing them is often little more than an inconvinience.

The Windows servers, however, make me want to say a prayer, draw numerous rune symbols on the server room door and rub a lucky rabits foot when I patch them. Oh, most of the time they patch just fine. That's *most* of the time. When something breaks, it usually breaks spectacularly and puts the system down for hours.

Re:In related news...

[paranoidgeek]

Windows machines are the only things that require you to have the machines patched quickly otherwise they die/turn into zombies

Unlike Linux machines that need regular patching to prevent them being rooted? There's no difference between any OS when it comes to a security hole, you patch it or you run the risk of being hacked.

Quickly. Can you find a *nix flaw that requires patches to be applied in 6 days or else a worm takes out the machine ? Sure *nix, like everything else, has old versions but they dont normally get this old this quickly.

For your driving analogy - if a manufacturer issued a recall, they are warning you about a problem. They can then turn round and say 'we told you not to use the brakes', but the driver obviously knows better and went ahead anyway. If I told you not to get in a car because its brakes weren't working, and you did anyway, would it be my fault?

Re:In related news...

[paranoidgeek]

Opps hit "Submit" not "Preview"

For your driving analogy - if a manufacturer issued a recall, they are warning you about a problem. They can then turn round and say 'we told you not to use the brakes', but the driver obviously knows better and went ahead anyway. If I told you not to get in a car because its brakes weren't working, and you did anyway, would it be my fault?

All the driver was doing was waiting until the week end so that he could take it of the road. Can you get a mechanic to fix your car within 6 days ? Not always.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, Adam or Eve?

Re:In related news...

[rikkards]

Your analogy would be correct if you had a mechanic living in your house being paid to ensure your car is running optimumly.

Users won't change because they are lazy and as long as they can get to the Interweb then they could give two shits. Your typical user is a 12:00 flasher who can't figure out how to set their VCR's time. Machine gets slow? buy a new one or take it into see the geek squad or mom and pop who will tell them they should keep their antivirus up to date and stop going to those Swedish teen porn links. (of course they are going to still go anyways).
They don't want to learn, point is that Microsoft has provided a tool that admins can use to keep their machines up to date called SUS server which will update your machines automatically while allow the admin control of what patches get applied to the OS.

Re:In related news...

[paranoidgeek]

I guess the point i was trying to make, but didnt make a good job of doing it, was the these people got their systems h4x0r3d because they were 6 days late in patching.

6 days doesnt give enough time for things like scheduling down time, reporting on how it will affect the system, and other things. Sure, you can get the patches on the systems in time but often they just cant get it installed due to network policies, or heaps of other things.

Also if Microsoft sells to "12:00 flashers" ( that sums up a number of people i know quite well ) maybe they should helpt to make sure their system doesnt turn into zombies ? I guess it isnt MS's responsibility but if since they sell into a lot of that market you do have to ask the question. I'm not asked MS to go round to everbody's house and install patches, AV, and anti-spyware i would just like it is is didnt have gaping flaws ( buffer overflows are nothing new, the first came out in 1988 and in 1995 Phrack had an article ) in what is promoted as a modern OS.

Re:In related news...

[paranoidgeek]

FWIW 2.2.x kernels have "hardened" patch sets avalible.

I think the difference between Linux and Windows is that Windows trys to be more secure by adding more "technology" ( a.k. buzzwords ) while Linux kernels tend to try to fix the flaws and make sure they arent there in the first place. I think this is backed-up by comparing W2k with XP and kernels 2.2.0 and 2.2.26 . Though sometimes this theory doesnt quite fit.

Re:In related news...

[drsmithy]

The various Windows worms seem to be able to find an easy way onto any unpatched system remotely.

By _definition_ a worm can find it's way onto any unpatched system remotely. Maybe you need to compare them to linux "worms" instead of linux "vulnerabilities".

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between what a linux distro does now and what it could do five years ago is enormous. If you disagree, you haven't compared them. As for the hardware, I and many other people I know run the latest and greatest on hardware at least a decade old. Fedora Core 4 with a full Gnome desktop runs acceptably on a Pentium MMX with under 200MB ram (though it won't set any speed records), and a wholesome Linux setup without a desktop but with otherwise modern and totally complete functionality will run on a computer that's probably at least 15 years old.

And further yet, upgrading desktops from six year old Linux versions to new Linux versions still results in a version of Linux

So if you don't like Linux, don't use it, you fuckin' moron. Still, pretty funny to hear a wanker complain about a pretty amazing set of software that people use to do every kind of task that a computer can be used for, and that people with actual technical knowledge consider a solid and advanced OS. I'll bet you have trouble even browsing the web, and yet you whine about Linux.

By the way, your website sucks ass, and you've made abundantly clear that you're a pathetic cunt.

Re:In related news...

[Hungry Admin]

Some Microsoft fanboy handed me an "overrated" mod point for mentioning that the blackhats are more of a threat than ever... perhaps because they mainly pose a threat to Microsoft, which is dependent upon security through obscurity.

Re:In related news...

[sheldon]

"The difference between what a linux distro does now and what it could do five years ago is enormous. If you disagree, you haven't compared them."

No different than the difference between say Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It still does the basic stuff... disk access, printing, etc. as it did before in much the same way. Is that your complaint about XP?

"a wholesome Linux setup without a desktop but with otherwise modern and totally complete functionality will run on a computer that's probably at least 15 years old."

Doubt it. My computer 15 years ago was a 386sx16 with 5 megs of RAM, and in 1992 it would barely run Linux with XFree86 and the most basic of window managers.

"Still, pretty funny to hear a wanker complain about a pretty amazing set of software that people use to do every kind of task that a computer can be used for, and that people with actual technical knowledge consider a solid and advanced OS. "

Now wouldn't the same be true of wankers complaining about XP? Hmm...

"By the way, your website sucks ass, and you've made abundantly clear that you're a pathetic cunt."

Oh my. I've been called a name by an AC.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

No different than the difference between say Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It still does the basic stuff... disk access, printing, etc. as it did before in much the same way. Is that your complaint about XP?

So I take it you do all your computing on a C64? I mean, it can still do disk access, printing, etc. So obviously there haven't been any significant changes in computing since then?

"a wholesome Linux setup without a desktop but with otherwise modern and totally complete functionality will run on a computer that's probably at least 15 years old."

Doubt it. My computer 15 years ago was a 386sx16 with 5 megs of RAM, and in 1992 it would barely run Linux with XFree86 and the most basic of window managers.

I said "without a desktop." It's right there in the line you quoted, for fuck's sake. Nice reading comprehension, twat.

Now wouldn't the same be true of wankers complaining about XP? Hmm...

I didn't complain about XP. In point of fact, I didn't even mention it. Again with the reading comprehension...

Truly, you are one of the douches.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of webserver are you running? I have had an Linux box running Apache for over a year with zero problems, and it took me about an hour to set up.

Re:In related news...

[sheldon]

So I take it you do all your computing on a C64? I mean, it can still do disk access, printing, etc. So obviously there haven't been any significant changes in computing since then?

Yep, if you listen to the anti-Microsoft zealots here, that is what you might conclude.

I didn't complain about XP. In point of fact, I didn't even mention it. Again with the reading comprehension...

Then what exactly are you babbling about?

Other than name calling, do you even have a point?

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where your thing about XP even comes into it. I never brought it up, or even saw mention of it in the thread until you started obsessing about it.

My point -- and I'm not sure how you missed it -- is that your petulant whining about Linux is completely ass-faced, i.e. that you have no point to make. Why the fuck are you complaining about Linux? You're incorrect in your criticism of Linux, and even if you weren't, what the fuck is the point?

The name calling is just for fun.

Re:In related news...

[sheldon]

"I don't know where your thing about XP even comes into it. I never brought it up, or even saw mention of it in the thread until you started obsessing about it."

Umm, as far as I'm concerned I'm talking to six million random monkeys.

"Why the fuck are you complaining about Linux?"

Who is complaining about Linux?

I only make fun of linux zealots who think they know something about computers, but don't.

"The name calling is just for fun."

That's ok monkey boy.

If you win a gold medal at the special olympics...

[MoralHazard]

but she offers excellent, neutral advice for any IT department considering a fundamental systems switch

Since when does a statement like "If you can't properly account for your network, you can't discuss how much it's costing you" become "excellent" advice? That's just common sense. You can't make intelligent decisions on ANY business cost without having some metrics on what your environment looks like. This is true of routers and servers, and it's also true of paper clips and donuts.

Have standards have slipped so much that a truly neutral "anonymous reader" would start singing Didio's praises because she suddenly said something that's true.

Actually, now that I've gone back and read the article submission, it smells like some SERIOUS astroturfing. Slashdot editors should take heed: if the submission reads like a press release, it probably is!

Well, D'uh

[anno1602]

TFA makes two main points:

1. Without adequate knowledge about your IT costs, you cannot make informed decisions about lowering your IT costs.
2. What OS (or combination thereof) is right for you depends on what you use it for.
3. Thank you, Miss Didio, for these valuable insights.

Re:Well, D'uh

[hahiss]

Actually, I've read drafts of her next reports, and they are titled:

1. Computers: The `On' Button is Now on the Front

2. You Can Probably Use a Text Editor for your Grocery List instead of MS Office.

3. Pants: Generally easier to put on one leg at a time.

It's a very misunderstood point.

[mrRay720]

Seriously, anyone who doesn't even have a clue how much their systems are costing them are only ever going to make it worse - and more expensive - by randomly moving to another platform because someone's friend told them it was free. Anyone making such kneejerk reactions without the figures also has a high probability of being a moron that makes anything they touch turn to sh*t anyway, making it doubly worse.

In essence - if you don't even know what you're doing with what you have, don't make it worse by changing it to something else that's so different.

I don't know if MS should be pointing this out in their marketing though - one one hand it's inherently true and a great way for them to fight the leaks to OSS - but it's also pointing out to the majority of customers that they're stupid.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[jkrise]

If it's such a vital point to "have a clue how much their systems are costing" it's very difficult to put a figure on the costing in a Windows network as well. When you factor in the cost of anti-virus, the CPU and RAM resources needed to serve mails, files etc.; the lack of decent tools and scripts that can be run by the systems administrator in any decent network of over 50 systems etc. etc.... it soon becomes clear TCO isn't what we read in the mags.

Having managed a network of over 300 systems for 4 years, I can say it with emphasis that managing and administering a Windows server/ network is far more time consuming and resource intensive and headache-prone compared to Linux servers. Not to mention benefits of cost, ease of configuration etc.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[stinky wizzleteats]

In essence - if you don't even know what you're doing with what you have, don't make it worse by changing it to something else that's so different.

And who is going to make the determination that you coming to the correct answer in the TCO shell game? Your software vendor? Your consultant?

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[mrRay720]

Huh? I was never arguing the relative merits of Windows vs Linux.

I was saying that if you won't even manage what you have at the moment properly, a half baked migration will just probably cause more problems & costs than expected, and it will end up being more expensive. Anyone so imcompetent as to not even have an idea of their system costs is also probably the kind of person to hand their existing admins a "Linux for dummies" book between them instead of properly cross training.

Stop assuming that every post not saying "moving to Linux ALWAYS saves you gazillions of dollars, omg Linux is teh bestest!" is a Bill Gates loving troll. You might find life better that way.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[jkrise]

"I was never arguing the relative merits of Windows vs Linux."

So why post your views on an article that specifically talks about Windows vs Linux?

"Anyone so imcompetent as to not even have an idea of their system costs is also probably the kind of person to hand their existing admins a "Linux for dummies" book between them instead of properly cross training."

Considering that Linux is primarily deployed on servers, companies can simply outsource the server deployment and merely train their sysadmin staff on maintaining the servers. And BTW, Linux isn't for dummies. If it were, it would be called Windows.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[mrRay720]

So why post your views on an article that specifically talks about Windows vs Linux?

Want to re-read that fubnny writing at the top of the page? It's not about 'Windows Vs Linux', it's about the TCO of running your network, of which Windows vs Linux plays an insignificant part unless you're running it correctly in the first place.

BTW, Linux isn't for dummies. If it were, it would be called Windows.

And thus proving yourself to be an ignorant troll. Or, as would that would be referred to here on /. - 'insightful'.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[mrRay720]

Yourself, if you are competent enough. Failing that, your replacement. If you are in charge of a network and don't know the costs involved, your boss really needs to replace you with someone who can do so.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[BOFH_of_OZ]

Seriously, anyone who doesn't even have a clue how much their systems are costing them are only ever going to make it worse - and more expensive - by randomly moving to another platform because someone's friend told them it was free.

Seriously, anyone who doesn't have a clue how much they spend on their systems wouldn't even be in business for much longer... However, you don't have to spend another $100,000 to hire some analysts who would tell you the exact amount you're spending.

That being said, if you have a network of 30 Windows servers doing most of the work, and if you have to reboot at least half of them daily because of BSOD/freeze/randomly going down/etc, and if you also have a vague idea of how much you have to spend on the license fees, antivirus, management tools, salary for the admins, service pack install downtime and so on - then, if someone you know well says that you can have most of those functions moved to a free (no licensing fees) platform which is stable and not suspectible to most viruses, performs better and you don't have to reboot it unless you change hardware - all that at the expense of having to hire someone who knows what they're doing (more salary per person * much less people) - this should give you an idea how much you can save yearly.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[mrRay720]

In that situation, as long as you're not running anything Windows only, you probably could save some money.

But again, running Windows is the minor issue compared to the fact that you have either faulty hardware or faulty admins. 2000 server, and 2003 even more so, is a very stable platform. Anything other than a once monthly 5 minute overnight reboot is a sign of either bad hardware or an admin that shouldn't be an admin.

In the five years I've been admin where I am, I've never had any unplanned downtime the system itself can be blamed for (i.e. not including power disturbances, new server, etc).

Well, I'm exclding one of the servers they had when I first got here that used to be the receptionist's PC, but with a cheap SCSI card shoved in there. That soon went.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[stinky wizzleteats]

Ah, so, play ball or you won't work in this town, is that it? Yes, I've been in the industry long enough to have heard that one. Unfortunately, my credibility is not for sale. My employment record indicates that there is a market for honesty. I have been consistently rewarded by putting my employer's concerns above my own fear of pissing off people like Microsoft. If more people thought similarly, we might not be in the midst of yet another globe spanning Microsoft spawned uberworm.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[mrRay720]

Huh???? Who the hell is talking aboout pissing off Microsoft, selling your credibility, and such?

I just said that if you are ultimately responsible for something (in this case the network), and don't know the costs involved IN YOUR OWN BUSINESS'S SYSTEMS, you're piss poor at your job. How the hell is putting a figure on what your systems cost you selling your integrity? I call it doing your damn job.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[xoplytnk]

Any person who advocates something as being "for free" is someone to ignore.

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[BOFH_of_OZ]

Anything other than a once monthly 5 minute overnight reboot is a sign of either bad hardware or an admin that shouldn't be an admin.

You seem to be missing the most common reason for the server reboots: software. I've seen implementations where you have to restart IIS at least weekly or it would lock up. Admins knew what theyre doing, hardware was good... such is life

Re:It's a very misunderstood point.

[stinky wizzleteats]

How the hell is putting a figure on what your systems cost you selling your integrity?

If you submit to the framing of the question on the part of a company interested in generating a preconceived answer, then considering the question to be valid compromises your integrity. The purpose of the article is not to help you meaningfully quantify the cost of a system. It is intended to make you think you can't do it without the help of software vendors/consultants.

That's the whole scam behind the TCO argument. How do you convince someone that your stuff costs less than free? Tell them that they don't know what "costs" means.

Laura seems a very confused person...

[jkrise]

Here's what she said a while ago... "But if Linux is really to take its place alongside Windows... then the vendors in this space cannot act like a bunch of hippies in a '60s commune or ashram"

And now... "Neither server system will consume the other. Both will coexist..."

Is it her point that Microsoft has in recent days started acting like a bunch of hippies in an ashram?

Or she has acknowledged that Linux is not about free lunch or beer, but true freedom for the customer, and hence compatible with capitalism?

Looks like after her FUD in the SCO affair fell flat, she's presnting more scientific FUD in doing a TCO comparison... why should she choose to study the methods of hippies, outcasts ans communists?
-

Neutral?

[polysylabic psudonym]

That doesn't sound neutral to me, it sounds more like:
"We know that you, and everyone else on the planet, can see that Linux is cheaper so I'll try to convince you that you don't know enough to judge the TCO in the hope that you'll then take the easy option of sticking with M$"

Was there a point?

[ddx Christ]

Was there a specific point to that article? It seems she tried to avoid any nitty-gritty details after her attempt at building a point that Windows isn't threatened by Linux, and vice versa. After that opening I expected something with more depth.

Instead, she threw in mindless details of the very obvious and took on a condescending tone toward businesses in general; of course, she did toss in random facts and figures that stuck with the general theme. To be honest, it looks more like a rant with ramblings than a neutral article with a point in mind.

You're missing something.

[$RANDOMLUSER]

In your haste to (correctly) point out all the bullshit in TFA, you guys are missing a golden kernel of truth here, probably written be an editor:

Contrary to what the headlines would have us believe, the biggest threat to Microsoft's continued dominance, at present, is not Linux. It is older versions of Windows. The biggest threat to Linux is not Microsoft, but rather integration and interoperability issues among various Linux distributions and their applications.

Although they missed mentioning the problems of interoperability between Linux and Windows and their applications.

Ok my 2 cents...

[TarryTops]

The most startling revelation coming out of the report was the fact that more than 50 percent of the respondents said they had performed a thorough TCO analysis. But when asked to calculate their specific Linux and Windows capital expenditure and maintenance costs, 75 percent, on average, could not answer explicit questions about their own environments.

Just fire the inefficient, good-for-nothing dumb ass managers. Because it's THEM who're being biased! microsoft sales people can really get cozy with these dimwits. Something Linux sellers have to learn.

Businesses lack basic, crucial TCO information, such as the cost of a Linux or Windows server upgrade and what they are spending on network management, third-party applications, tools, utilities, ongoing maintenance, security , systems downtime , calls to the help desk and hardware and software breaks and fixes. The absence of such crucial financial information makes it difficult for corporations to make informed purchasing decisions and heightens risks when choosing technologies that are ill-suited to their business needs.

Get a VMWare,use ESX servers, Use Virtual Center(VMotion) Get good smart staff fully trained properly in it(fire good-for-nothing morons), pay them real good. and tell the a good technical manager to do the math on the physical machine(s) only regarding support/renewal etc.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all operating system that is right for every scenario in every environment. Depending on a corporation's business needs, current and planned technology infrastructure, and capital-expenditure budgets, either Windows, Linux or some combination of the two might best suit the firm's technology needs, budget and business goals.

Wrong answer! Use VMWare! And hey BTW it seemed more like a rant to me!

TCO vs. balls in a vise

[Anonymous Coward]

It is much more important to execute a plan and get the job done than it is to figure out the TCO of something that is impossible to nail down definitively anyway. This is why every network everywhere is so screwed up, but it's just the way it is.

But whatever it costs, we know that linux will only get cheaper, and that Windows will continue to screw you over because they have you by the balls.

Re:Linux if you got money, Windows if you got more

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it to be quite the opposite. The company I work for switched to Linux, which cost A LOT of money up front. We had to train new people, hire *nix gurus and a bunch of other stuff. But maintenance costs are MUCH cheaper.

So yeah, if you're switching OS's it is going to be a large initial investment, but Linux will save us big time in the long run.

Come on fellas

[NihilTyrannis]

when are we gonna just admit these studies and articles are just fanboy peter-wagging for one side or the other?

TC0

[Gherald]

> A New Look at Linux vs. Windows TCO

I liked The 0ld Look better :)

Whatever

[Dr.Opveter]

Whatever, she's just a closet hippie
(non article anyway)

Poor article? Just a oped/story!

[QX-Mat]

Maybe its me, and a couple of years of university education, IEEE zines and the medical journals im inundated with, but I could not help but feel the article 'talk the talk' but didnt really do anything.

There were no facts or figures, and there were certainly no references to the broad statements (either insitu of as an epi).

I dont think Laura did much more than get her weekly salary. Maybe she was thinking more about her August holiday than her readers? I know I would be.

Matt

Get the facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here: http://www.windowsvista.hu/

Laura DiDio

[Anonymous Coward]

Laura DiDio... Laura DiDio...

Ok, I wrote her name twice on my keyboard and might remember it for a couple of hours.. Is that a sufficient payment of attention for her?

Or should I really read that article and allow her to put her brain into my head?

Damn, people like these happen when they skip on programming.. then CS study... then Consulting.. and finally become a Journalist.

Re:Laura Didio

[megrims]

Right. And doesn't that logic discredit your comment because you're (seemingly) anti-Laura DiDio?

Re:Laura Didio

[stinky wizzleteats]

My logic does not depend upon the absence of bias. The fact that I think Didio is an anti linux mouthpiece in no way detracts from my ability to prove such.

The original article, however, attempts to come across as neutral, a position precluded by bias.

Yesterday...

[Spoing]

McAfee virus scan update on Win 2K server. Requested a reboot. Dammaged System file and Windows won't boot. Known problem in MS's knowledge base; looks like McAfee's fault.

Remote administration, project files, print server, ... gone.

I could have fixed it, but didn't as I'm on other projects my boss would have my head if any of those slipped. Instead, it was (and still is) down and won't be repaired till sometime today when the admin (who I've been coaching -- while restraining the impulse to yell at him for some really bad decisions and no concept of security) comes in and fixes it.

At the same time, the Linux server keeps plugging along. (Unfortunately, admined by the same guy who keeps wanting to open ports instead of using tunnels.)

Re:Yesterday...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, when Windows falls over it really sucks.
Cant say it is too good even when it is working.

Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[OwlWhacker]

The biggest threat to Linux is not Microsoft, but rather integration and interoperability issues among various Linux distributions and their applications.

Yes, this is an issue that needs to be resolved; but, to say that this is the 'biggest' threat is completely over-the-top.

I would say that the biggest threat to Linux is integration and interoperability between Microsoft and Linux/Open Source solutions.

Linux distributions don't use proprietary file formats, APIs and protocols. Microsoft can easily integrate with Open Source software. But if you're developing Open Source software that needs to integrate with Microsoft software, be prepared to pay up.

Competition creates a win-win situation for everyone.

So, why doesn't Microsoft make its file formats, APIs and protocols open and free (as in beer)?

Why is Microsoft constantly in trouble for anti-competitive practices? The only conclusion I can sensibly come to is that Microsoft doesn't like competition.

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[alexhs]

>>Competition creates a win-win situation for everyone.
> The only conclusion I can sensibly come to is that Microsoft doesn't like competition.

Of course, a monopoly doesn't like competition.
Even a small company doesn't like competition.
'Everyone' means consumers, the public.

Competition is good for the latter : even if you're going for a MS solution, Linux is good if you obtained a rebate from MS by threatening them to use an Open Source solution.

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[OwlWhacker]

Of course, a monopoly doesn't like competition.
Even a small company doesn't like competition.
'Everyone' means consumers, the public.

That's a very interesting point you make; however, I could add that although many small companies don't 'want' competition, they don't go out of their way to prevent it like Microsoft does.

And, if companies don't like competition, why do we have conflicting messages from Microsoft that would lead us to believe otherwise?

"Microsoft welcomes competition because it drives innovation which benefits customers" - Microsoft (here).

If Microsoft welcomes (i.e. accepts with pleasure) competition, it should open up its file formats, APIs and protocols. That should certainly drive innovation, and certainly benefit customers.

Or is Microsoft lying?

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[Trelane]

That's a very interesting point you make; however, I could add that although many small companies don't 'want' competition, they don't go out of their way to prevent it like Microsoft does.

Well, yes and no. No business wants competition; it cuts into profit. The ideal situation for any business is monopoly, held tightly by external forces (e.g. supply chain pressuring consumers to stay with the monopoly, or a government, or natural things like scarcity (e.g. power lines)).

Small and medium business do what they can to prevent competition and kill their competitors, just like the big companies. The key words, however, are what they can. The powers of small and medium businesses are quite limited, so their actions are held in check quite well by competitors and outside forces. Not so far large companies, particularly Microsoft. There are very, very few comptitors (sometimes none!) who can truly push back hard and hold these companies in check. In certain situations, the only real organized resistance is the government and other regulatory agencies, who make sure that even if their actions go relatively unchecked, they can't break the rules too badly. Unfortunately, the political process opens this last avenue up to influence by those who are to be regulated.

Or is Microsoft lying?

Well, yes and no. Microsoft is lying as much as any other company does. PR and all that. It's not lying in that they're trying (in some ways) to interoperate. Interoperation in symbiotes is very good for Microsoft--it provides additional solutions on top of Microsoft's that they themselves don't (yet) provide, and allows Microsoft to get new customers and keep others who may have left to go to a competitor that has what the customer needs.

It's lying in that it wants competitors to interoperate with it like it wants a kick in the shin. Customers being free to migrate around increases competition greatly, since any new startup can come by and potentially work just as well as Microsoft software, and at least some users will migrate away [actually, it'd be interesting to model this like a quantum mechanical system]. It's definitely in Microsoft's interest to keep their customers locked in to their software to the greatest extent that the customers will allow. Problem is that it seems that customers are pushing back a bit, so Microsoft has to do a little to placate them. Hopefully people won't be fooled back into a local maximum of goodness. The global maximum of goodness (truly equal competitors) requires overcoming an activation energy (leaving the Microsoft fold and worrying about all the documents in formats that aren't always perfectly transferrable, program and hardware compatibility, etc. that they should be considering. She who controls the data controls the business! If Microsoft pulled your Office licenses tomorrow, what would you do? How well could you transition to another office suite or OS? What about if Apple died tomorrow, if your presentations are in Keynote? How about if OpenOffice developers got frustrated and quit, if you use OpenOffice? This is an extremely important question, since there are fairly good probabilities that such questions will come up (though not necessarily the ones I've listed)! If you fail to take this into account, you'll find yourself sued or otherwise annoyed, unable to switch to a competitor to push back as a customer, and railroaded into License 6.0! (for a recent example))

But the short answer is that Microsoft is lying exactly as most other businesses would in their situation. I hold hope that not all businesses operate this way, but I'm not fool enough to believe that it doesn't come at a price (cutting into profits). The key problem is the amount of Microsoft's power due to its marketshare. It's really up to the users ("consumers" leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as it doesn't really imply the powe

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[Anonymous Coward]

"And, if companies don't like competition, why do we have conflicting messages from Microsoft that would lead us to believe otherwise?"

It's called trying to sound reassuring noble by lying. Actions speak louder than words.

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[BeerMilkshake]

For me, the biggest threat to Linux is the hardware/driver support.

I gave up on Linux for my laptop as I ended up with an unsupported WLAN card (Broadcom's, not Linux's fault but the end result is the same). I never managed to get the video pushed out on the projector port. Suspend-to-disk, nope.

This won't improve until the big vendors (Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM) start selling computers where they already have Linux installed and every feature Just Works (tm). Only then will Linux be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with M$.

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[alexhs]

> That's a very interesting point you make

Thank you ;)

> altough many small companies don't 'want' competition, they don't go out of their way to prevent it like Microsoft does.

That's because they're not monopolies and therefore can't. I'm sure many companies would dream to be some other Standard Oil Company (Rockefeller) or Microsoft (William Henry Gates III).

> And, if companies don't like competition, why do we have conflicting messages from Microsoft that would lead us to believe otherwise?

Because there's a twist. Microsoft likes competition in other fields that those it occupies, because it means more clients.

Like : Microsoft like alternative browsers, BUT based on our iehtml renderer (sign here for a license).

Or with the Rockefeller analogy : the standard oil company likes competition between oil-consuming companies.

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[Citizen of Earth]

however, I could add that although many small companies don't 'want' competition, they don't go out of their way to prevent it like Microsoft does.

They don't go out of their way to prevent competition because they don't have the power. Instead, what they tend to do is cooperate with open industry standards in order to give their products more sellability. However, the industry giant always opposes and attempts to subvert open industry standards. Then successful small companies become industry giants and oppose competition. It's the circle of life.

Re:Completely OTT - Laura DiDio at her best.

[drsmithy]

Why is Microsoft constantly in trouble for anti-competitive practices?

"Anti-competitive practices" are just "competitive practices" that a judge has arbitrarily decided are "bad".

The only conclusion I can sensibly come to is that Microsoft doesn't like competition.

No company likes competition - it's bad for business.

Typical DiDio - better editing

[Kefaa]

Regardless of what the original poster thought, she does not supply neutral advice. If anything, what I see here is an attempt to appear neutral, but throwing in veiled threats.

Windows commands 65 to 70 percent of the server operating system market, while the Linux share stands at 15 to 20 percent
What market? What segments? What percentage of computing power? When you say MS runs 65% of the market you imply (and this is where Laura also gets here reputation) that everything else is a marginalized entity.

The high-level findings show that there is no universal clear-cut TCO basis to compel the corporate masses to do a wholesale switch from Windows to Linux
Gee, one machine, operating system, language, et. el. does not meet all needs. And this was insight? To whom? If anything this should be more concerning to MS, but it is also a plug for MS (as the owners of the market). But she follows it up with:
The majority of wholesale defections to Linux continues to come at the expense of midrange Unix installations...

The we see her drive home the MS competes with its own products (because they are just so good you need not upgrade), while Linux competes with its poorly defined systems, lack of support and array of distributions.
But, contrary to what the headlines would have us believe, the biggest threat to Microsoft's continued dominance, at present, is not Linux. It is older versions of Windows. The biggest threat to Linux is not Microsoft, but rather integration and interoperability issues among the various Linux and open-source distributions and applications. The lack of enterprise-level application support and documentation for the aforementioned software packages also is an issue.

Sorry but this is typical DiDio, with some enhanced editing to ensure it give the appearance of being unbiased. But she hit all the MS talking points.

Re:Typical DiDio - better editing

[Tim C]

Gee, one machine, operating system, language, et. el. does not meet all needs. And this was insight? To whom?

Having been reading this site for the last half a dozen years or so, I have to say in reply, "Most people here".

Re:If you win a gold medal at the special olympics

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is just what i thought when i saw who posted this. People!!! Keep this in mind: do not trust ACs postings and do not allow them to submit stories.

p.s. Of course you can trust me in this.

Nice rant

[Cyphertube]

Well, it's nice to see someone rant at the wide number of incompetent decision-makers out there. I wish there were more details as to what some companies purchasing decisions were, and the circumstance were surrounding them, so that we could all go out and ridicule them.

The nice part is that DiDio is basically pointing out that most companies can't make a TCO argument since they lack that basic element (i.e. a clue). Hence, she's someone poking in Microsoft's eye regarding all these TCO reports.

The reality is that most companies go with what they know, and most bosses go with what they think they can understand. That means Microsoft tends to stick everywhere, unless they put Unix in. If it ain't Microsoft, Sun, or Apple running the operating system, well, that's a rarity, and you've got a situation with a boss who's a bit more experimental than chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Linux, well, that's like 51 flavours.

Where I've been working, if it were up to me, we'd have ripped out Windows long ago. We're still on Windows 2000, and we continue to face all kinds of issues. We stick with Windows because the boss in comfortable with it and we have software vendors stuck on it. But the number of tech support requests is phenomenal. Most are caused by users doing stupid things, which in turn eventually corrupt the registry.

It seems a break from the usual DiDio article. Maybe she's taken up drinking. It doesn't make here a better writer, but maybe the attitude will shift enough.

Re:Linux if you got money, Windows if you got more

[Petersson]

Man, I wish I was rich and then I'd not have to give a crap.

Money is not an issue.. Since even all money in the world can't buy you completely secure and safe Windows.

Wrong Conclusion

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you do not know what is on your network, if you cannot at least estimate the hourly, monthly or yearly cost of downtime, if you do not know how long it takes to recover from a security outage, if you cannot answer questions about the extent of your company's license compliance, then you cannot truly evaluate whether Linux, Windows or Unix is right for your business.

I think a strong case can be made that if your organization does not know these things about your own systems then chances are that you really could benefit from moving to linux for one simple reason - license compliance.

If your company doesn't have a clue about what OSes and what software is installed where, then chances are you are just one disgruntled employee's phone call away from a devastatingly expensive SPA "audit."

The sooner you can say, "I may not know how many installations of Redhat, Mandrake or even Ubuntu our company is running but I know damn well that none of the machines are running proprietary software," the sooner you can sleep easy at night because the risk of a SPA audit has been neutralized.

Well based on your summary, it has great meaning

[ColourlessGreenIdeas]

In order to work out the best OS for you, you need to look at the details of your organisation instead of blindly believing articles by the Yankee group to find out what's the 'no-one ever got fired for buying...' option.

I say that's good advice.

Why is /. pimping so many M$ infomercials?

[SgtChaireBourne]

Why is /. suddently pimping so many M$ infomercials these days?

That into can't have honestly been written by someone who knows anything at all about DiDio's history. What's next? Another TCO comparison written by Enderle to support DiDio?

Idiots can learn

[chickenrob]

When I switched to Linux on my desktop, I was forced to learn quite a bit more then I knew about my OS. Someone who switches to Linux because their frind told them it was better is in for a similar experience, and could end up saving his company untold fortunes by getting educated about his/her OS.

She still gets it wrong

[buss_error]

The biggest threat to Linux is not Microsoft, but rather integration and interoperability issues among various Linux distributions and their applications.

What a moron. Windows is not the biggest threat to Linux. That I can agree with. Windows is the best reason to switch to Linux. Microsoft isn't a threat, obvious patents filed by Microsoft are the threat. Sure, the patents are bogus, but it takes lots of money to fight off the hydra.

I took the quote from someone else's posting. I refuse to give a hit to a site publishing her trash.

Re:She still gets it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

wow...guess you won't be visiting slashdot anymore??

Still the same Didio

[taj]

Didio is still the same old 'analyst.' Right there giving the Microsoft sales pitch with the same Microsoft paid for 'research.' This just represents a shift at Microsoft not with Didio.

It is nice to see Microsoft is realizing the Get The Facts campaign failed and they are regrouping as Linux continues to advance.

Linux is making big moves in the large companies and governments. The folks that do do their own TCO. Microsoft is just trying to infuse FUD here. "Did you do your own TCO?" "Are you sure Linux will save you money?" This is aimed at fighting the coattails that the big Linux wins will be bringing out of Microsoft's market.

Microsoft lost the debate (TCO) because it was an impossible ground to defend. Now they are trying to appeal to charging cattle.

TCO Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

People tend to compare Linux and Windows servers with the server they most used to.

Therefor things that aren't a problem on one side, become a problem on the other.. If Im used to Windows servers, I find things on my Linux machine that has to be "fixed", just cause "It shouldn't be that way". And the other way around if Im used to Linux, I want to fix my Windows machines on the same grounds.

Therefor, putting a Windows TCO person on doing a studdie over both Windows and Linux, is going to comeout with higher "fix-costs" for the Linux machines. Cause the correct dismisal of unneeded requests aren't handled correctly. The same is going to happen if you turn it around.

We had a person seriously requesting me to exhange our Sendmail mailserver for Exchange so she could use her Outlook addressbook. What does this endup in your TCO calculations? In mine, request is denied and costs me 30 seconds explaining the mather, and the other case a investigation for opensource software that would emulate a Exchangeserver on Linux would be done, costing maybe 16 hours of investigation and 8 hours of implementation.

The other way around, could be a TCO of how much our programmers would lose if they couldnt use all Unix utilities, cause they where running Windows. But ofcause this isnt messured, I know that the addressbook probely saved that emplyee some time, buy replacing the servers for windows would increase others.

If you don't know what's on your network

[guruevi]

Then you have bad admins. A (good) network or system administrator has to know at all times what is on the network and investigate where the bottlenecks and other problems are. If you do not know that, then you are indeed in big trouble (or you have Windows administrators which do indeed not know what is running on their Wintendo). Then you should not consider what systems you are going to switch to, you have to consider what people you are going to switch to.

Elephant in the corner

[Anonymous Coward]

People talk easily about TCO and the cost of processing and network communication, because we understand these with established metrics. The big important factor that is never discussed in business, data.

Most companies biggest unrecognised asset is their data. Data migration (or not) is the elephant in the corner that nobody seems to want to talk about. Especially Microsofties who start humming 'lalala I can't hear you' when the issue presents.

When I sell Linux to clients this is the cornerstone of my arguments. Quite simply your data is not safe on a Microsoft system.

Here are the reasons:

1) Format cul-de-sacs

It is vital to ensure that YOU OWN your data and it is not locked into a proprietry format that allows you access under licence or places control of your data in anothers hands.

2) Format longevity

It is vital to collect or store your data in standard ISO/POSIX formats that will not be obsoleted anytime in the near future.

3) Content transparency

Hidden meta data, embarrassing edits kept in word documents, invalid time stamps, inappropriate copyright or other IP tags. Do you actualy KNOW what is being recorded into your files?

Those are 3 of my list of ten reasons why the TCO of a Windows system is massively greater than a Linux system from a data-processing managers POV.

Nobody from Microsoft ever talks about it, and that, to me at least, is very telling.

AAARGH! MY EYES!

[Rogerborg]

I've been blinded by a flash of the obvious.

Hell, no.

[andr0meda]

"Rival vendors improve the inherent performance, reliability, security and scalability of their core offerings."

She says it like she`s citing the weather information in North Alaska.

I haven`t seen proof of security, I see only headlines of new virusses being written because of security issues.

I haven`t see any of that performance increase either. My XP system`s performance is completely gone after only 4 months of operation, where my old w2k system at least pulled through for the last 3 years without much problems. Granted, it boots faster.

Reliability. Well, it`s good to know that there is more reliability, but it`s a bit difficult to test it. How much more reliable was my previous version of visual studio on win2k, compared to .NET? MUCH more reliable. The .NET version simply hangs itself up and reboots with simple memory leaks. You`d have to go pretty damn far to get the old VS to break.

Scalability. Yep. On a desktop I guess XP scales a lot better than w2k.

Re:Hell, no.

[andr0meda]

Scalability. Yep. On a desktop I guess XP scales a lot better than w2k.

Not to mention the version specific directx.dll distributable that has to be re-supplied with your application, every time a user upgrades his directx version. Kind of makes the whole idea on DLL`s simply worthless, and simply NOT a smart move for the PC platform and it`s games.

Re:Hell, no.

[Octorian]

You know, I wonder how much of the DLL version hell in the Windows world might be a hold-over side effect of building a mentality around short 8.3 style filenames. I know the restriction isn't there anymore, but it is kinda a hack outside of the NT world (and everyone wants to maintain some sort of Win9X compatability)

Likely the reason that problem isn't as bad as in the *NIX world, is because we've never had much of a filename-length option, nor a limited extention issue, and have tacked version numbers onto library filenames for a long time.

Of course the way many Windows program installers dump crap into the WINDOWS directory is also quite bad, but an area I'm not sure *NIX is much better. (sure, more organized, but still not much better fundamentally) Of course Apple seems to do a much nicer job here, making programs quite "self-contained".

Re:Hell, no.

[TheRaven64]

One install scheme (I think it originate on SunOS, but I could be wrong) which I've always liked was to install every app into /opt/appname/. Underneath that, an application could create its own directory hierarchy that mirrored the system hierarchy. For this to work really well, you need a dynamic linker and periodic script that adds /opt/*/lib to the linker path. The advantage of this approach is that you can install an app (or library) by just un-tarring it into /opt, and uninstall it by just deleting its directory.

I don't really know why this hasn't been adopted by the community.

Re:Hell, no.

[orasio]

I do as I was told.
My filesystem said: /usr/share/lib !!
So I shared.

Re:Hell, no.

[colinrichardday]

So every app installs its libraries into its own subdirectory? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of shared libraries? Does it also install its executables into its own subdirectory?

Re:Hell, no.

[Patoski]

One install scheme (I think it originate on SunOS, but I could be wrong) which I've always liked was to install every app into /opt/appname/. Underneath that, an application could create its own directory hierarchy that mirrored the system hierarchy. For this to work really well, you need a dynamic linker and periodic script that adds /opt/*/lib to the linker path. The advantage of this approach is that you can install an app (or library) by just un-tarring it into /opt, and uninstall it by just deleting its directory.

This type of filesystem organization is beautiful in its simplicity but how does one handle security updates / bug fixes for different libraries contained in /opt/*/lib/?

Unless I'm missing something you're relying on the application vendor to provide those updates on a timely basis. That doesn't give me a warm fuzzy for a couple of reasons:
1) The number of updates that this system would seemingly require ought to rise dramatically since each vendor has to patch (insert random lib).
2) The variability from vendor to vendor and their responsiveness to patching vulnerable / buggy libs that their application may use.

I know that there are a few linux distributions trying this sort of filesystem organization out. Can someone elighten me as to how these library issues are addressed?

Re:Hell, no.

[TheRaven64]

Not at all. libfoo would be installed in /opt/libfoo/lib. If there is a security update to libfoo, then you just delete /opt/libfoo and untar the new version into /opt. Since /opt/libfoo/lib was already on the library search path, this wouldn't even need the library path to be updated.

Re:Hell, no.

[NickFortune]

So every app installs its libraries into its own subdirectory? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of shared libraries?

Nope. Although you do need to know where they are to link against them/load them.

Does it also install its executables into its own subdirectory?

Wouldn't matter as long as the user has read access. Just add it to your path.

Re:Hell, no.

[Patoski]

Not at all. libfoo would be installed in /opt/libfoo/lib. If there is a security update to libfoo, then you just delete /opt/libfoo and untar the new version into /opt. Since /opt/libfoo/lib was already on the library search path, this wouldn't even need the library path to be updated.

Ah ok, that is a little different than what some linux distros are doing.

This makes far more sense than the current state of things in the Linux world at the moment with applications scattered hither and yon. It doesn't seem to resolve the issue of orphaned libraries when an application is uninstalled and no other application is using thea lib. I suppose ya can't have everything. :-)

Re:Hell, no.

[DavidTC]

Well, that's the new rule.

You don't actually have to improve security, you just have to assert you improved security.

Research? Why should anyone do any research? Aren't companies and the government trustworthy?

Re:Hell, no.

[subsolar2]

One install scheme (I think it originate on SunOS, but I could be wrong) which I've always liked was to install every app into /opt/appname/. Underneath that, an application could create its own directory hierarchy that mirrored the system hierarchy. For this to work really well, you need a dynamic linker and periodic script that adds /opt/*/lib to the linker path. The advantage of this approach is that you can install an app (or library) by just un-tarring it into /opt, and uninstall it by just deleting its directory.

I don't really know why this hasn't been adopted by the community.

One problem with it is it makes it more difficult for libraries to be updated if there is a security vulnerability ... you have to look for & update the library in X places.

Then there is the issue of an update scheme for the application ... each one will probably require it's own and so basically updates won't be done. At least if you keep with the OS's core packaging scheme you can at least use the sytem updater to update the system be it YUM, APT or something else.

Re:Hell, no.

[Camel Pilot]

You symbolic link just as before. There is a script (although it could be a feature of the os or file system) that creates these links to shared libraries if you want.

Re:Hell, no.

[Vanders]

Such a scheme is being used by various operating systems. Syllable is one, and Gobo Linux is another. There are a few more whom I forget right now.

Re:Hell, no.

[colinrichardday]

But linking would require that you have the correct library/executable, so why not just use them? How does cluttering up your application directories with symlinks help?

Re:Hell, no.

[colinrichardday]

But if you link against them, why not just link against a file in /usr/lib?

Re:Hell, no.

[NickFortune]

But if you link against them, why not just link against a file in /usr/lib?

There are advantages both ways. If you keep everything in whatever/lib then you have everything (more or less) centralised so you know where to look for it.

On the other hand, individual /opt dirs allow applications to install without (necessarily) needing root, they allow apps to create the same */lib filenames without overwriting each other. The other solution to the overwriting problem is subdirs under path/lib, but if you're going to do that, you might as well put them in /opt.

Interestingly, /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib both started life as non-system locations for user resources and have become co-opted by the system (/usr/lib more so) as their use was formalised. The /opt system just takes that idea to its logical extreme.

I should also say that I don't personally like /opt. Partly that's because I remember commercial systems where /opt package directories were obfuscated as far as possible - a right pain when you need the release notes for one of fifty packages and upgrades lurking there.

But that doesn't make it a bad way to do things - just different

TCO... HA HA HA HA

[salesgeek]

Look, TCO is sales device that has gone amuck. Back in the 60s the mainframe guys came up with TCO to justify the purchase of more expensive iron against lest expensive systems by bundling the kitchen sink and some intangible, "soft" numbers with actual prices. TCO had all but dissappeared by the early 90s when Gartner suddenly came out with the now famous TCO report that applied the old TCO concept to newer computers. Sales people everywhere rejoiced because you could easily:

Bundle software, hardware, networking and professional services and compare that against existing infrastructure and the IT departments salaries.

Include whole cloth fabricated numbers such as "downtime costs" "lost productivity costs" and so on that existing systems have that superwhamadyne new systems don't have.

IT executives liked TCO because the CFO like numbers. Salespeople liked TCO because they had underutilized MS Excel chops and could create pretty convincing slides with cost comparisons. CEOs liked TCO because they like bar graphs.

Finally, the IT media which really could be rebranded as "PR Newswire for Dummies, Technology Edition" liked TCO because their articles took on an air of gravitas that they never had before.

If you don't know where you are, go somewhere

[panurge]

Strangely perhaps, I don't necessarily buy into the concept that if you do not know where you are, you need to find out in depth before you move. Yes, I'm biased: I work for a consultancy that advises people on business change, but we are solution neutral. We have spent endless hours of philosophical debate on the measure versus fix issue, and at the moment the fixers are ahead on points.

If you do not know where you are, just consider the cost of finding out. If your solutions have grown all over the place, it can be ridiculously expensive to do the analysis in order to find out how much they are costing. The analysis you need to do, is what solutions do you need? Once you know that, you can do some sums.

Often the analysis needed is a high level overview. If you have lots of users in similar environments all using home crafted spreadsheets - chances are you need to replace it all with some properly organised reporting from a database. Especially if you have reason to suspect that you have only 1 original copy of Office for a hundred users. If you have lots of users endlessly copying documents - chances are you need to document management system, a central repository, perhaps an internal print shop. If you have offices full of inkjet printers, you will save big money in consumables and reports by a proper deployment of laser printers. If you have loads of deskbound light email users all using Exchange server and Outlook - you are wasting an expensive resource because you could put them all on a low overhead server and Thunderbird.

Once you know your needs you can do some planning - which may be to stick with the Windows you know and love and clean up the shit. But it might be that when you expose what people actually need to do, and how they need to cooperate and share data, you would be better off building on a Linux platform.

Summary of that ramble: You do the TCO on where you need to get to, not on where you are today. Because it is practically guaranteed that you are wasting money today; you just need to find out where, in fairly broad brush terms.

I guess that analysis is why I could never have worked for McKinsey and other obsessional bean counters. But ask yourself; if you suspect you are knee deep in shit, is it better to analyse the composition of the shit or to look for a ladder?

Actually, it's understatement

[Anonymous Coward]

The best question in the whole article was about how much it costs for the network to be down. Suppose it costs a million dollars a day for the network to be down. In that case, it's a huge understatement to say that your computer use isn't optimal if you lose a day.

Most businesses have no clue what downtime costs their core business. (How much does it cost them because they can't process payments for example.) If they knew how much it cost not to have the use of their computers, it would change TCO completely (in Linux's favor I suspect).

TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[standards]

Only the dumbest manager would say "Oh, which platform has the lowest TCO? - we'll buy that exclusively"... because a opereating system in of itself simply does NOT HAVE A TCO!

The TCO comes in EXCLUSIVELY at the application level. You should make TCO calculations at the Application level ONLY.

What is the TCO to run PeopleSoft on Windows versus PeopleSoft on Solaris? That's a GREAT question, and it's highly dependent on the application and the organization it's going into.

What's the TCO of Windows versus Linux? That makes no sense. It depends on the application.

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[pointbeing]

Only the dumbest manager would say "Oh, which platform has the lowest TCO? - we'll buy that exclusively"... because a opereating system in of itself simply does NOT HAVE A TCO!...

I'm afraid this is incorrect - OS have acquisition costs and maintenance costs. The person who applies an OS patch most likely doesn't work for free.

One thing they teach you in Management 101 is that if you can't measure it you can't manage it. The argument that Linux acquisition costs less than Windows is essentially a moot point, since the biggest single cost in IT is personnel, not hardware or software.

Salarywise I think a good Windows admin should command about as much as a good Linux or Unix admin, unfortunately the majority of Windows admins I've seen can't even spell enterprise, much less act as part of one.

TCO is high because companies choose to trade skillz for salaries - and rather than hire a good Windows admin for $80-$80k a year or so, they go for the $45k inexperienced MCSE who's only demonstrated that he passes tests well. God help them when the $45k MCSE costs them a couple hundred thousand bucks in downtime because he couldn't figure out how to fix a problem.

Friend of mine works for a major processed food producer and told me yesterday that all their Windows 2000 machines and some of the older Windows XP machines got hammered by Zotob yesterday.

I told him that the patch to fix that vulnerability was released a week ago and there was an MS security bulletin on the thing - and that any admin worth paying knows that in this day and age, once the vulnerability is made public the worm won't be more than a couple days behind. Anyway, the company he works for apparently didn't think it was real important to patch the machines and Zotob took their entire production line down - costing them a couple million bucks, I guess.

First thing I'd do is ask the CIO why the machines weren't patched and then ask for his resignation - but I would give him the opportunity to fire a couple of middle managers berfore I kicked him out the door.

TCO? The main cost is and always will be good people.

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[standards]

OS have acquisition costs and maintenance costs. The person who applies an OS patch most likely doesn't work for free.

Absolutely true. However, you are speaking of "PCO", or partial cost of ownership. In of itself, the PCO value is meaningless, as it fails to consider all value and costs. But your post body does speak of TCO. So I'm not sure where you're coming from - I think we're on the same page.

Let's take the dead BeOS versus PrimeOS debate (just to remove religious issues). Which one has a lower PCO? BeOS is $10. In contrast, PrimeOS costs $99. (these are fake numbers, by the way, just as an example).

But wait! There is the cost of administration. OK, a BeOS expert needed to maintain your system costs $20000/year, in contrast to a PrimeOS expert that costs $15000/year.

And now we consider the APPLICATION. You need you operating system to provide a critical application to the accounting department. The cost to run the department is $1000 per hour. With BeOS, you predict to be down 16 prime time hours per year; with PrimeOS you expect to be down 4 hours a year.

Looking at IT costs alone is looking at PCO. You must look at the TCO to solve the equation. The main cost isn't IT people, it's the overall business cost.

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[pointbeing]

I think we are on the same page. Thanks for clearing that up ;-)

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[marcosdumay]

"Salarywise I think a good Windows admin should command about as much as a good Linux or Unix admin, unfortunately the majority of Windows admins I've seen can't even spell enterprise, much less act as part of one."

Not really. There are good Windows admins out there (most of them also know *nix), and the ones I know are still less productive (even salarywise) than *nix admins. This is Windows falt, because it has poor administrating tools and a lot of security flaws.

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[twiddlingbits]

You guys are missing the point here. SOMETHING drives IT costs which in turn will drive up overall business costs. Your costs in IT are driven by People, Processes and Technology. Now, apply Pareto's Rule, that says 80% of the costs are driven by 20% of the issues you have. Find out if that 20% is due to the technology (i.e. the OS or Applications), poorly trained people, bad management, bad processes (like no virus patching), or something else then FIX it. You can have a well designed, well run Windows environment that costs your firm less than a poorly designed and poorly run Linux environment. The issues are more complex than you think, their is the interaction of each of the three areas that must be considered to come up with TCO. TCO is *only* an estimate anyway, and it is only as good as the data collected for use in the computation. IMHO, you need an indpendant audit from an external source to come up with a good TCO estimate, otherwise you get bogus data from office politics and pressure to come up with a number that matches what th PHB thinks it is. The reason no one does it is that getting a TCO is not trivial, and it is most likely going to make the IT Management look bad which can never happen ;)

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[standards]

Again, I think we're on the same page. TCO isn't based on simply one variable (like "windows" or "linux").

It's quite sophisticated, and IT costs are (hopefully) a small part of the equation. However, how well IT systems are run can greatly impact TCO.

As always, "it depends". If you try to say "Windows has lower TCO", good luck... because it greatly depends on your specific application.

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[jbplou]

You'd fire the CIO over a SMS package miss. Even at the cost of the mistake that would be crazy. Do you really think the CIO is planning things like SMS updates to machines. I would highly doubt that anyone who reports to him even reads security updates daily. If this is a major food processing company the cost of firing, finding, and hiring a new CIO will be quite expensive in its own. A more resonable thing to do is to do a postmordum on the problem and fix it so it never happens again. You fire a bunch of people and the org losses everything they learned from the problem and set themseleves up for the same thing to happen again. Your point is correct that the main cost is good people, but they aren't always available. Especially for a food processing company, they probably aren't doing cutting edge stuff. To some degree you have to develop your employees so that they improve.

Re:TCO analysis of OSs completely flawed

[pointbeing]

You'd fire the CIO over a SMS package miss...

I'll admit to a bit of hyperbole here ;-)

The bottom line is that either

• hotdog, inc's security policy is inadequate, or
• somebody didn't follow it.

IM frequently less than HO this isn't the first time a patch has been almost immediately followed by a worm - this lesson *should have* been learned two years ago.

I wouldn't really fire the CIO, but I probably *would* fire the person who disregarded hotdog, inc's security policy - and if that policy didn't exist (which is hard to believe) then I'd make creating and enforcing such policy first priority.

After making those yummy lips and arsehole products, that is ;-)

Goes to show ya

[LaminatorX]

"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

Re:Goes to show ya

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but a stopped clock can be wrong by up to six hours -- and the mean error is 3 hours. Whereas a clock that is five minutes slow and not gaining or losing, may never show the right time but neither it is ever going to be wrong by more than five minutes.

DiDio says a mouthful - rare

[AetherBurner]

"Chances are, if you cannot answer most or all of those questions, it does not matter what operating system you have because ignorance of the core TCO tenets means that your business is not getting the most out of its networks." ------- This phrase says a ton. Even though her humorous missives have the M$ tilt, this line stands on its own. I see it as saying that if your IT department can't come up with these numbers, regardless of their software-of-choice, then they are really sleeping on the job. Now my question to add on this is - How may IT departments really are sleeping on the job and can't handle a major emergency? I can submit this example: Server room is on UPS - Switch rooms are not - Outside data modems to rest of company are not - Power failure - whole company shuts down. Yea, the servers are fine but everything else is lost. The idea of TCO does not affect just whose OS you use, it is the whole system from network to servers to user.

That's the way the press works

[Qbertino]

They just babble and recite what they heard recently. Linux/OSS is slowly closing in on critical mass and standard procedure - just like everybody in IT predicted. Pupblic opinions adjust accordingly and the press releases articles that say: "Yeah, well, that TCO stuff we told you last year could be wrong because you can't do good TCO prediction without good data. [fill in appropriate external source here]"
No, really? Wouldaya thunk!
In two years we'll have the same people writing about how Linux desktops kick ass in this or that corporate enviroment that have an own IT administration.
For the last 5 years the last advantage of Windows has been the one that counts: Windows has a monopoly. That's an ADVANTAGE to users, so they use it. Luckyly Windows is so crappy it will hopefully lose that advantage in the end.

It continues to amaze me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that the "IT news industry" keeps maintaining the categories of "workstation" and "server". The "server" category is, in particular, INCREDIBLY broad. The thought that Windows even plays in the same field as machines such as Sun's E15K is alot like saying that laptops are taking market share away from mainframes. In order to provide a more accurate comparison, they really need to break the "server" market down further.

Either by purpose:
1. File/print serving
2. Internet (Web/Email) servers
3. Small/Medium Databases
4. Large/Very Large Databases

Or possibly, even a more simplistic approach:
1. Small Servers
2. Medium Servers
3. Large Servers

Either way, I'm sure they will find that the "Windows commands 65-70% of the server market" is highly dependent on which types of tasks they define as "the server market".

Also, does anyone know if this claim of "65-70%" represents the unit count of servers shipped running that operating system (um, many PC's get re-purposed with different OSen) or if it represents the dollar value of those servers?

one surefire way to lower the TCO of any computer.

[TonyMillion]

Throw that wireless mouse out of the window and replace it with a nice corded one.

I think my mouses TCO was higher than the TCO required to run my computer!

Back of Envelope

[soloport]

Ok, here's the back of my envelope:
1) Everywhere I've worked, the Windows admins outnumber the Unix admins, at least 2:1, per managed machine.

2) The Windows admins seem to work in a half-frenzied state, much of the time, while the Unix admins try to look busy, much of the time.

3) Windows admins are hard-working, loyal, dutiful, do-as-you-say-Sir types, whereas Unix admins are chronically lazy -- and lazy like a fox.

4) Windows admins are excellent at solving "hit the box with open hand, right here, and it will go" problems, or "magical" solutions, but are narrowly focused on the Windows world (there are so many incantations to learn, I guess), whereas Unix admins can typically solve most problems on Windows PCs and can also manage Cisco, Macintosh, Sun, IBM, DEC, BSD PC or Linux PC, etc. (i.e. platforms that usually "just work" and are designed well, not just marketed well)

Seeing that salaries, in most organizations, grossly outweigh hardware and software costs, per year, I think I can safely toss out nearly all TCO studies and just "hire smart". I'll let my people decide what works, not a TCO study, thank you.

Re:Back of Envelope

[jrexilius]

As a support for the parent a capital markets (financial trading) bank I worked in had 144 unix servers and desktops (yes desktops) and close to 250 windows servers and desktops. there were 5 unix admins and 1 manager and 15 windows admins and 5 managers. the unix stuff was what pushed all the real money and rarely had outages, and the admins worked 8:30 to 4:30 on the dot if that. Windows guys were so overworked that it was hard to get them to make improvements..

every other place I have worked, if it had windows which wasn't many, was the same.

every place I worked, when millions of dollars were on the line it was *nix.

Re:Back of Envelope

[IamTheRealMike]

Question is, what are the demographics of the UNIX vs Windows desktop users? I've supported secretaries/marketing types on Windows PCs before and yeah it isn't so much fun, but I suspect supporting them on Linux desktops wouldn't be great either ... in fact supporting them period kinda sucks :)

I wouldn't read too much into UNIX vs Windows, it probably says more about the types who use those systems than anything else.

Re:Back of Envelope

[ekarjala]

I manage an IT systems engineering group for a large corporation. We currently manage nearly 10,000 servers with a split of 60% Windows and 40% UNIX (Solaris/AIX/Linux). Our Windows servers are managed at a server/admin ratio of 100:1 while the UNIX servers are managed at a ratio of 50:1. The vast majority of our Windows servers are built with an unattended OS install; our UNIX servers are not. Our Windows servers receive software distributions via a centralized TPV product that ties directly in to our Asset Management system; our RISC-based UNIX servers do not. We are working to bring the UNIX environment up to snuff with the levels of efficiency already realized in the Windows environment, and we will. Windows servers can be managed as effectively as UNIX servers and vice versa -- It just depends on who is doing the managing. I agree with the comment above to "hire smart". Just make sure you do it for all platforms your organization supports and not just the ones that don't have a nice GUI. Windows servers are the best fit for many of the needs of our organization, UNIX and Linux are best fit for others. The key is to find the best solution, regardless of platform, and then manage across those platforms in a unified way.

Re:Back of Envelope

[garompa]

:) I work in a mixed Windows-*NIX admins floor here, and I agree 100% you described us so well... the only thing I can add is that the Windows admins have the tendency to buy gadgets that don't work if you don't have windows installed.

Re:Back of Envelope

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah big time.

I once had to support a small SVR3 server in a secretarial pool (yeah, SVR__3__, long time ago....) and it was a pain. I spent much more time supporting the five of them on one machine than I spent supporting thirty engineers spread across one Vax 750 and two Sun 670s. That group provided almost all their own tools support. I just did network/email/backup stuff that required root. If they accidently botched something building tools, they would politely ask (great crew, really) if I could help them recover back to a working state when I got a chance.

Fortunately for me, the secretarial pool was only there from 9:00 AM to 4:30. No out of hours calls.

Re:Back of Envelope

[Sigg3.net]

You're horrificly right.
Especially about the MS obedience (and non-understanding of hackers, e.g. "they are evil" or "inmature teenagers") and the frenzy.
Then there's the stack of "fix-it-all" CDs everywhere in their office.

Re:Back of Envelope

[spinfan]

3) Windows admins are hard-working, loyal, dutiful, do-as-you-say-Sir types, whereas Unix admins are chronically lazy -- and lazy like a fox

Maybe this is why it seems that we only hear from the Unix admins on slashdot, the Windows admins are too busy working?

Re:Back of Envelope

[DavidTC]

The problem with Windows isn't that Windows can't be managed competently. It can, and proper management should at require no more than the same order of magnitude as a Unix system that gets used the same amount.

And comparing Unix servers to Windows desktop is inheritly misleading. Desktops get pounded on. Windows desktops might have more security issues than Unix desktops, and that does raise the TCO, a lot, but don't compare them to Unix servers that sit in the corner forever. Properly adminned Windows servers can almost do that, barring updates every month.

It's just that, while the amount of competent Windows admin roughly equals the number of competent Unix admin, the number of completely incompetent Windows admin vastly outnumbers the number of completely incompetent Unix admin. This is because the incompetent bar is lower on Windows.

Or maybe a better way to put it is that there's a middle ground between competent and incompetent, let's call it quasicompetent, before I piss anyone off. Normally self-taught, thinks they understand everything, but can't explain, for example, LDAP or domain servers.

And quasicompetent Unix admin are almost as good as competent Unix ones. They will be able to get everything up and running. They'll be the ones who don't have shell scripts to do 90% of their work for them, and couldn't build the existing network, although they can maintain it fine once pointed at the tools the competent one wrote.

Whereas quasicompetent Windows admin will constantly be running around, doing updates, restoring from installs, reconfiguring, deleting adware and viruses, rebooting, adding hardware with broken drivers, etc etc.

What does this mean? If you hire a quasicompetent Unix admin, your network will basically work, and they will sit around in a screened bitchx all day talking with their friends.

If you hire a quasicompetent Windows admin, you will have no end of trouble if your network is over 15 computers.

And there's absolutely no obvious way to tell the difference between quasicompetent people and competent people, even after you've hired them. They all seem to know how to perform every task, but the competent knows what should be done to solve a problem, whereas the quasicompetent one just knows how to make it go away for now.

It's just that, with Unix, that's usually enough.

Re:Back of Envelope

[Anonymous Coward]

2) The Windows admins seem to work in a half-frenzied state, much of the time, while the Unix admins try to look busy, much of the time.

Hey! Stop blowing my cover would ya? I'm doing my best to make it look like this is really difficult and time consuming. :P

Re:Back of Envelope

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it depends on what you need the server for. If you have a win2k or win2k3 box that is just sitting there running a database, sending emails, or serving up web pages, there is very little that you have to set it up, and also very little to keep it running. I know this sounds dumb, but you really do just click next a dozen times (unless you have a preconfigured drive image that you just copy over), and you're done. There is no messing with config files, no scripts to run, no environment variables to set. To patch you just enable automatic updates and you're done with that part.

Now, if you have a machine that many people use and all of whom can muck around with the resources and break stuff, obviously you will have to spend time to keep an eye on things. Thankfully i never had to deal with something like that.

Also i've got two gentoo boxes and a win2k machine at home. The win2k machine has worked perfectly for 4 years untill i had to reinstall because i changed my hard drive configuration. The gentoo boxes give me problems than any other linux and bsd distro i tried, but they are still much less hands off. I've had emerge break for me numerous times. I don't even remember all the things i've had to do to fix it anymore.

Re:Back of Envelope

[pe1chl]

I don't think Cisco belongs in that list. Cisco stuff is mainly overpriced hardware running an outdated monolytic piece of software that has too many bolted on additions and features. It is more or less like Windows, in that regard.
And they market it marketed so well that people still think it is the best and that it is worth the money.
But in reality the company will not even support the customer who bought their expensive hardware; they will have to pay separately for support. And small but essential feature updates cannot be made easily because everything has to go in the generally released monolythic IOS.

Cisco IOS is like running a system like Knoppix on all your production machines. You can make changes to some pre-determined configuration item but not to any part of the functionality.

Re:Back of Envelope

[ekarjala]

Agreed. It is much easier for an average user to manage a handful of windows servers as opposed to UNIX servers. They will manage them like they would a set of discrete desktops and it will keep them fairly busy, but it is do-able. These folks lack the skill to scale that support out due to their dependence on the GUI and a single user mentality. This level of accessibility does not exist in the UNIX world, therefore a certain corresponding level of mediocraty is bypassed completely. Still, to manage either platform at a high level requires top notch skills.

Re:Back of Envelope

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. I'm a Windows admin. Well, I can get around in various *nixen too, but my working days are Windows.

And I don't mind at all; in fact I love it. I don't know if you'd call me a do-as-you-say-sir loyal dog fetchin' the bone for Massa Boss, and while I see some points in the stereotype, I still RESENT THE STEREOTYPE, as any good slashdotter should.

I read /. and daily see examples of 'pick the worst of MS and compare it to the best of OSS'; so much so that it's an in-joke here. You guys can do better than that, you really can. YOu could start treating the other guy the way you want him to treat you.

But that'd be too civil now, wouldn't it?

Re:Back of Envelope

[chivo]

The vast majority of our Windows servers are built with an unattended OS install; our UNIX servers are not. Our Windows servers receive software distributions via a centralized TPV product that ties directly in to our Asset Management system; our RISC-based UNIX servers do not.

This sounds like a managment problem. Everything you describe about your Windows setup has been available for must UNIXs for quite some time, and I doubt very much that you have to shell out the same insane amounts of cash to get it working with your UNIX servers that you had to for your Windows network.

Money money money

[Mr_Silver]

Without trying to sound cynical, the reason she didn't recommend one solution over another was because no-one was paying for the research.

Had Microsoft funded this survey, I'm sure the statement "then you cannot truly evaluate whether Linux, Windows or Unix is right for your business" would have read "then Windows is right for your business".

Re:Money money money

[jonfr]

How can free or really cheap be more expensive then an Os that costs alot of money ? Training costs aside.

Re:Money money money

[Mr_Silver]

How can free or really cheap be more expensive then an Os that costs alot of money ? Training costs aside.

Migration and porting costs. Redevelopment of Windows only applications and scripts. Potential purchasing of new hardware to support new software. Support for external vendors who may have to change the way they work with you. Anyone who works on this isn't going to do it for free, they'll have to be paid.

And, although you wanted to leave it out, training costs can become quite significant - not just for end users, but potentially administrators and other companies who you depend on or who they depend on you.

I am sorry but the writting is adolescent

[tod_miller]

It smacks of trying to hard and comes off like a college undergrad doing philosophy or sociology.

Of course, I realize the irony of attacking someone writing style coming from a slashdot user, let alone myself. However, I cannot read this while visualizing the type self affirmed 'intellectuals' who write with their tongue lolling around.

How did she get such a wide distribution and voice? Now I realize. Anyone can bet published if they really want to, just write a fairly well written piece, and you are magically the seeder of keywords to a news site.

People get paid to blog, I hope she isn't curling her toes up at her literary success.

I am suprised she didn't use words like juxtaposition or procrastinate.

Re:I am sorry but the writting is adolescent

[tod_miller]

Just to highlight the irony:

'to hard'
'too hard'

tsk. Anyway it was style not spelling. Almost anyone can spellcheck / proofread. (if they want)

Hot Grits

[Vorondil28]

I was literally seconds away from clicking submit on a post along the lines of "As long as she's naked, petrified, and covered in hot grits, I don't give a crap about her position on software TCO."

Then I saw the Wikipedia link above...

Never.
Mind.

Not very objective in writing

[tod_miller]

The excessive use of I and me make this an opinionated blog which doesn't lend credibility to her argument or 'findings'. In short, this is basically a troll.

And nothing breaks up usability than interpersing links with iconic meta-data about their meaning.

OOoooh a shopping basket next to the dell logo, give me a break.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all operating system that is right for every scenario in every environment

Well, if there is no one-size-fits-all than I do not assume one could be right for every scenario in every environment... else it would be one size fits all.

I read an article about overuse of words and redundant writing, designed to sound more academic than it is. This is a prime example.

We should stop giving giving too much credit to everything published online.

I hate that every week I end up on a new 'news site'. Newsfactor... again I think this is the first time I am seeing this source.

When people can gain more recognition through bad writing ('is often written off') then people tend to listen more and more... her bad writting is fuelling people apprent interest in her articles.

Don't feed the trolls.

Re:Not very objective in writing

[Trifthen]

The excessive use of I and me make this an opinionated blog which doesn't lend credibility to her argument or 'findings'. In short, this is basically a troll.

It's not just that. She also frighteningly overuses the word "you," thereby creating a combative relationship with her reader and forever removing any academic or impartial quality the article may have contained. I can't take any written piece seriously if the author can't understand that simple rule.

Laura Didio

[stinky wizzleteats]

DiDio often is written off by the Linux camp as being pro-Microsoft,

Uh, no. She's widely regarded by everyone as being a mindless Microsoft shill.

She isn't just a TCO shell game drumbeater, she is actively and demonstrably anti-Linux. An article from her has about as much credibility as Baghdad Bob.

Re:Linux if you got money, Windows if you got more

[arethuza]

Well, I pay $30 a month or so for a shared Windows hosting service with Database Power and it works fine. Haven't had any problems in the year and a half that I've been using them.

Close enough to "completely secure and safe Windows" for me.

Note that I have no connection with Database Power other than being a customer.

What it really means

[Mr. Underbridge]

What does she say: a Yankee study revealed that no good data on the relative TCO of Windows and Linux servers was available; the TCO will vary from organisation to organisation; without knowing the TCO, it is hard to make an informed decision.

What she doesn't say: "We started out to do a pseudo-objective TCO study backed completely by MS. When we saw the results, even I couldn't spin them pro-MS. Therefore, to satisfy our contract deliverable to MS, we wrote some inane crap suggesting that TCO is so highly subjective it doesn't matter what OS you go with."

For Pete's Sake!!!!!!!

[tod_miller]

She has covered operating systems and related security issues for 18 years as an analyst

18 frikking years?

In mid-late 1987 the security concerns were viruses on copied Amiga games. I think someone is polishing their resume a bit.

Windows 3 wasn't even out.

Re:You're missing something dail-up.

[colinrichardday]

I have broadband, but I was able to get the modem in my laptop working (oh yeah, it's one of those inexpensive Averatecs ($699 after rebates)).

Hmm. . . A hardware modem costs $80? I want to check on that.

Laura DiDio -- Dishonest, As Usual

[Anonymous Coward]

I see Didio is up to her usual tricks. And some anonymous astroturfer characterized her article as being "excellent, neutral advice." Hmmm.

Let's look at her article...

> The biggest threat to Linux is not Microsoft, but rather integration and interoperability issues among various Linux distributions and their applications.

That's dishonest statement #1.

Oh, it's true that there are sometimes interoperability issues between different distributions of Linux, but those issues are usually minor compared to the interoperability problems between different versions of Windows and its applications.

But it doesn't matter, because the typical user will not encounter those problems. Think about it. If most users avoid running multiple, different versions of Windows, why would they suddenly choose to run multiple, different distributions of Linux? The answer is, they wouldn't -- they'll choose one.

So we see that Didio is creating a strawman argument against Linux. In other words, it's FUD.

> Neither server system will consume the other.

I have never heard a Linux advocate make that claim, so who is Didio arguing against?

> The big question currently confronting corporate users is whether harmonious heterogeneity is possible. It had better be. If it is not forthcoming, everyone -- corporate end users and vendors alike -- stands to lose.

This is another piece of subtle FUD. The message here is that, until Linux is fully compatible with Windows, businesses should not bother looking at Linux.

But we all know, that Microsoft is constantly working to ensure that Windows is INCOMPATIBLE with other alternatives.

This is another strawman argument. Consider, for example, the incompatibilities between different versions of Windows, yet that has not stopped businesses from upgrading.

Besides, not everyone is interested in heterogenious environments. For example, I am personally associated with two small businesses that have switched to Linux, and they both switched 100 percent. They run Linux on both servers and desktops -- there is no Windows left.

It's true that Windows' intentional incompatibilities tend to keep users locked in. But, rather than being a reason for accepting your fate as a slave to Microsoft, that should be an even stronger incentive for wanting to switch to an alternative.

You have to choose for your business, whether to:

1. Accept some temporary inconvenience due to compatibility problems, as you switch to an alternative. Or...

2. Accept the permanent inconveniences of being stuck with Windows (most people can list what those inconveniences are).

> Microsoft's Latest News about Microsoft Windows commands 65 to 70 percent of the server operating system market, while the Linux Latest News about Linux share stands at 15 to 20 percent.

The above is intentionally misleading, because it doesn't state what those percentages represent.

My guess is that they represent percentage of server sales _revenue_.

If, instead, she had been talking about serving _power_, then Unix and mainframes still dominate the market.

If, on the other hand, she had been talking about the _number_ of new installations, then the percentages for Linux and Windows tend to be much closer.

> Yankee Group recently completed an extensive total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison report in which it polled 500 North American corporations on their use of Windows and Linux. The high-level findings show that there is no universal clear-cut TCO basis to compel the corporate masses to do a wholesale switch from Windows to Linux as there is for a migration from Unix to Linux.

First, most of those studies were paid for by Microsoft.

Second, Yankee Group has gained a bad reputation as a Microsoft shill.

Third, those studies are contradicted by the real-world experience reported by companies that have switched to Linux, such as Amazon, and

A New Look at Linux vs. Windows TCO

[ScroogeMcDuck]

TCO is useless: too many factor influence the costs of using one or another solution/implementation.

This article seems not so interesting and somehow trolling...

if you don't know what msft will charge in the

[walterbyrd]

future, then don't use msft. Because you will be completely vendor locked.

Seems to be one of the "ifs" she forgot.

Paraphrase

[paranerd]

No. I didn't read the article, but, from the teaser is it correct to paraphrase her argument as, "If you're stupid, stick with Microsoft."?

Re:Linux if you got money, Windows if you got more

[pointbeing]

In the news, hosting service Database Power was the target of several computer attacks after someone praised their services on the the Internet site slashdot.org

In other news, Internet hosting service Database Power closes a user's hosting account. Film at 11.

Re:You're missing something dail-up.

[BOFH_of_OZ]

WinModem drivers simply do not exist or function correctly for most WinModems.

http://linmodems.org/ anyone?

Seriously, I've dealt with about 4 WinModems in the past, all working perfectly on Linux. I admit, you have to know what you're doing if you are to use WinModems on Linux... But you have to know what you're doing if you're using Linux, period.

Reason for higher Windows TCO: Different Mindsets!

[ErichTheRed]

Disclaimer: I work on both sides of the fence.

It is very true that most Windows deployments have more admins than Unix or Linux ones. I think there are two reasons:

1. Unix/Linux systems are generally more locked down. More of the "guts" of any application generally lives on the server side, and users have very specific ways of interacting with their computers. This way, the geeks in the server room run most of the show...Windows installations are very desktop support-intensive. Even in places where people are given control over their desktops, there are fewer things to break. In contrast, Windows systems are very open...even fully managed systems still give the feel of full control. Often, Windows admins are faced with applications that may (or may not, and they just don't know it) require broad rights on the user's system, and they just give them the access.

2. Until very recently, tasks on Windows systems were not very easy to automate. Even now, the scripting capabilities could be much more intuitive if tweaked. A lot of Windows admins are of the mindset that scripting is code, and they don't touch code. That's an atttitude that has to change. In my opinion, Microsoft was smart to build all their sample script code around Visual Basic...it's at least readable by a novice admin. I couldn't imagine teaching some Windows admins Perl...they'd give up in a day and go back to manually visiting all their systems!!

Now that Windows systems have automation capabilities that can actually be trusted, the playing field might change.

Must read this for TCO analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Read IT Application Downtime, Executive Visibility, and Disaster Tolerant Computing for an analysis on TCO!

Re:You're missing something dail-up.

[ajs318]

Well, in some jurisdictions, Windows-only hardware is technically illegal. In many jurisdictions it is technically illegal not to supply programming information for hardware on demand.

However, corporations in the USA are hiding behind the law. They want to conceal their hardware specifications not to protect themselves from competitors {the official line}, but rather to avoid exposing the mendacious claims they make in respect of their products.

Knowing how to use your sound chip to generate a tone of a specified pitch, loudness and duration is not going to help a competitor one iota. Knowing that your "modem" is little more than eight carefully-chosen resistors and a comparator, and the latest fancy 64-bit processor is doing most of the donkey work of turning sounds on a phone line into zeros and ones {a CISC processor is utterly wasted on this sort of task, and the Neumann architecture -- which is designed for generality of purpose; it can do anything faster than something that wasn't designed to do that can do it, but not necessarily as fast as something that was designed to do that and only that can do it -- imposes a bottleneck in this situation}, might put off the more tech-savvy customers.

Her bias shows right here . . .

[mmell]

"...if you cannot answer questions about the extent of your company's license compliance..."

M$ or SCOtum rhetoric for certain, eh? Lemme guess - the Yankee Group still insists that proprietary OS's with per CPU or per seat licensing schemes are still cheaper than an OS with a $0.00 purchase price, right?

Isn't that rather like a eunich trying to convince a whole man that it's great to be neutered?

Re:Her bias shows right here . . .

[ajs318]

We know for sure that we are 100% licence compliant. We modify the software we use, sometimes quite heavily; yet we don't distribute such modified software to anyone. If we did, though, it would be as source code. Easy innit?

OTOH, if we were using closed-source software, it would be a freaking nightmare.

PR Crap

[Daddy_was_a_donkey]

Is it just me the smells the faint but distinctive odour of PR about the original post? It reads like something straight out of an agents profile of a client...

Do TCO Studies Even Matter Anymore?

[tarawa]

Seriously, for the past few years theres been these TCO studies and they always flop back and forth (ussually depending who the writer prefers). There's just so many, trying to include so many variables, instances, and situations that the whole TCO thing has become unhelpful.

My experience has been that companies who invested in good people, who can think objectively, for their IS departments have smoother running operations than those companies that let the TCO studies make their decisions for them.

Where I work, we run a majority of Windows boxen that we simply have to buy because there is a lot of proprietary software that we require that only runs on Windows. But for the REALLY important stuff (billing, client records, and vital for survival stuff) we have an AS/400, a couple big HP Unix servers, a Linux based Oracle database, and a little Linux email server.

The Windows problems are typically caused by the wierd quirks you find with proprietary software, but typically leads to us being told by software's support group, "Reboot the machine and lets see what happens". Honestly, most of time the reboot does fix the problem.

The AS/400 and UNIX/Linux servers never need to be arbitrarily rebooted because a program is misbehaving, they just sit there and run. If a program is misbehaving, we can kill the program, find the problem, fix it, and start the program again.

What it comes down to is having good people running your company's IS department. They are the ones who will know what works and what doesn't, and they will buy the hardware appropriate for the task.

All that said, as far as I'm concerned, 99% of all TCO studies fall under the category of FUD, irregardless of which OS they come out in favor of.

Re:Do TCO Studies Even Matter Anymore?

[51mon]

'"Reboot the machine and lets see what happens". Honestly, most of time the reboot does fix the problem.'

I hate to be picky, but rebooting very rarely solves a software problem. I have seen a couple of boxes boot, and the boot scripts correct whatever was wrong, but that is perhaps a couple of times in a career, and I'd worry about whoever wrote those boot scripts writing any more software for me, because it is exactly that sort of thing that makes managing IT systems difficult.

Rebooting might work around a problem (maybe this workaround is "good enough"). It might make the system work okay for a bit, but the underlying problem is still there.

When you say weird quirks in proprietary software, do you get these quirks as often on the AS/400, HP-UX, or Oracle?

Why is she getting free /. publicity?

[Nice2Cats]

Could somebody explain to me what this is doing on Slashdot? Why are the editors giving a known enemy of Linux, or rather, a known SCO and Microsoft apologist free exposure? Since this amounts to free advertising for a professional analyst, can we just assume they getting a cut somehow? Why, for example, don't we see regular articles linking to Groklaw instead, given that the sources there can at least be verified and the financing behind them is clear? This lady's record on the SCO case shows that the word "objective" doesn't even seem to be in her vocabulary. She is pro-Microsoft, pure and simple. I can get stuff like this from any Microsoft trade magazine.

If people are leaving Slashdot for other sites where the readers can moderate the postings instead of being force-fed crap like this by the editors, I am less than surprised. I find myself other places more often, too. This is not news that matters. It isn't even news.

(What is going to really piss me off, of course, is when they post the inevitable dupe)

Why so hostile?

[Jeff Hornby]

I'm not sure why the Slashdot crowd is so vituperative about this article. Laura Didio's past rantings aside, this article basically says that most corporate TCO comparisons are inaccurate because the corporations don't have enough information to make a proper comparison.

As a long time consultant, I'd say that the article is pretty accurate. It's rare that IT projects are forced to do a proper business case to justify the expenditure.

Re:Why so hostile?

[wizkid]

Laura Dildio's previous articles have been so innacurate that it's obvious they were written to Microsoft specifications. I haven't read this article (yet), but that's where the slashdot hostility comes from. from some of the /. reviews, this sounds like a good article to read. This could be a pleasent change from previous articles LD articles.

beyond that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that the whole point behind being POSIX compliant was to offer ineroperability.

Bill Gates is Satan!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we even bother posting these articles?

Everybody knows that Windows causes sterility, blindness, and the gates of hell to open wide, swallowing up you and your loved ones.

Conversely, Linux--Used properly--makes all your relationships harmonious, provides an infinite source of renewable energy, ends world hunger, and returns balance to the force.

Metrics aren't always important

[MooseTick]

Many organizations only use their networks for mail, file, and print services. If they are working to everyone's satisfaction and are within the accepted budget then performing countless metrics can just be a waste of time.

Why should you make major changes if all is working well and within budget?

MOD THIS CRAP DOWN

[benjamindees]

I'm sick of looking at it. It's completely wrong. Whomever modded it up needs to be examined.

Windows servers *do* need more attention. It's blatantly obvious.

Re:Linux if you got money, Windows if you got more

[eebra82]

"When will they ever learn? When will the ever learn?" Linux is not so much about the money, but about freedom. And freedom has no price - I know what I am speaking about!

Bullocks. Freedom does have a price and is usually very expensive. I assume you didn't serve in the front line in Iraq, but freedom is just a fancy word to me. And as for costs, the only reason my company switched to Linux was for its better security. I am not saying that this model fits into every company, but in this instance, it was in fact more expensive. We also read a story the other day about some Irish(?) police force switching over to Office from Staroffice, claiming much lower costs. Seriously, Linux is good stuff but it's far from that good and in many cases, Windows IS BETTER.

Hell (was Re:Well), no.

[coats]

Open Source comes from a uniquely American idea now, thanks to the Internet, exportable to the world at large: voluntary community associations.

Alexis de Tocqueville (one of history's sharpest observers of the American psyche) commented at length upon voluntary community associations: when Americans encounter a need in their communities they form(ed) voluntary associations to deal with it rather than saying "Let the government do it" and waiting forever for an inadequate response. In this they are unlike any other people on Earth: not the British, not the French, Germans, Italians, or other Europeans, not even like the Canadians.

The most obvious examples are the neighborhood hospitals, fire-fighting associations and the community schools that existed before the States took them over.

I noted a more recent example on a recent trip to Hawaii: that state refuses to recognize the village of Volcano on the Big Island. The village funds its fire department, its parks, and its community center by monthly community cookouts! (I was there for a marvelous Mongolian barbecue :-)

For that matter, what is a corporation but a voluntary association for the purpose of doing business (and generally--but not necessarily! --there are not-for-profit corporations, particularly hospitals and universities) making a profit.

And now the Internet has made possible globe-spanning virtual communities that build Linux and a host of other Open Source programs.

Re:Hell (was Re:Well), no.

[labyrinth]

You are contradicting yourself- first you say voluntary community associations are uniquely american, and then you say corporations are voluntary associations. Corporations (for profit or non profit) are not uniquely (or originally) american.

Re:Hell (was Re:Well), no.

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The most obvious examples are the neighborhood hospitals, fire-fighting associations and the community schools that existed before the States took them over.

All of which existed as far back as Ancient Classical culture. You must be seriously mis-interpreting what de Tocqueville said or he had issues.

Re:Hell (was Re:Well), no.

[goatan]

The most obvious examples are the neighborhood hospitals, fire-fighting associations and the community schools that existed before the States took them over.

These sorts of thing (people coming together for the benefit of society) existed long before America itself. The modern word for it is socialism.

The UK and Europe in general is covered with voluntary community associations ranging from simple meeting groups for the elderly all the way up to things like the RNLI a voluntary lifeboat service the auxiliary voluntary fire service and a volunteer ambulance service (St Johns). Seriously voluntary community associations are probably as old and as common as humanity.

throw away your envelop - the boss can't read

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing you are missing is that Windows admins are a dime a dozen. A Windows admin is seen as something like a machine part, based on what certifications they have. They will have no trouble finding a replacement for any Windows admin - they just look at the list of checkboxes of what certifications the person has. It is a "clean", mechanical process to them. It also appears to the boss that Windows is less expensive because the Windows employees are less expensive, but this is only because bosses are unable to understand the long term expenses associated with Windows maintenance. A Unix admin is often self-taught and actually has a personality of his own. This is a difficult concept for HR departments to grasp. In fact, HR feels threatened by someone who enjoys knowledge for its own sake and operates outside the drab monotony of the corporate-university.

Linux is a few 100 dollars/PC/yr cheaper than Wind

[pogson]

That's just the hardware replacement cost because Microsoft and the PC manufacturers conspire to replace about evry three years while Linux users can go five years easily.

The software cost differences are small for thin client/server systems because whatever it costs is divided by N where N is the number of clients. The per-seat cost of Microsoft does not go away, however.

Maintenance costs of the software are much higher with Microsoft because you have to do a lot of rebooting (downtime) and there are just more patches per unit of software. Microsoft has about the same number of patches just for its OS as Linux does for the OS and all its apps.

The real big cost difference is malware. Billions are spent on fixing damaged Microsoft systems annually and the downtime has costs. I have worked with hundreds of Linux systems and never had any downtime for malware. Most Microsoft systems I have seen need annual re-installation and maintenance as well as patches.

Actually

[sheldon]

Windows 2000 was released in December of 1999.

Re:Actually

[thisissilly]

When calculating how old you are, do you figure from the point you were a viable foetus, or when you were actually born? Windows 2000 was not available to retail stores and the public until February 17, 2000.

Even if one were to count the start of manufacturing in December, it is currently August. We're still only at 5 years and change.

Laura DiDio and Amityville

[Fished]

I'm posting it here just so everyone can see ... I found it first! I've just updated wikipedia, so it should be out pretty soon. It turns out that Laura DiDio has been sensationalist throughout her career, and that she was intimately involved in the Amityville Horror hoax. In particular, she did the first story, and later brought in a bunch of "paranormal investigators" to look into it. Remember, you heard it here first ;)

TCO

[MrCopilot]

Our companies TCO is a simple formula.

Cost of Hardware + Cost of Software + My Salary.

My Salary is a constant. Cost of Hardware is roughly constant. Linux = FREE. Win2000 Server around $1100

I therefore have proved Linux TCO is $1100 lower than Win2k Server.

I should add, our linux Servers have considerably more software (which is $0), so if you add in non crossplatform equivalents it looks considerably worse for MS.

Wish I could get rid of that last Win2k, but It's still doin the job. Hacked/Cracked twice for a total of 2hrs in 5 yrs, but No Data Loss/Damage so I keep it humming along.(Has previous programmers Custom Apps/Servers which I can't rewrite for linux until it is neccessary.)

Re:TCO

[Creepy Crawler]

Have you asked them about recompiling with consideration for full support to WINE? It's not like demanding for Linux, instead just asking that it be Windows Emulator compatible.

Unless it's hellbent on MS-SQL, postgres would work fine (well, thats the biggest dependancy I can forsee).

Re:TCO

[MrCopilot]

Recompiling. Ha! I want to eradicate the offending and I do mean OFFENDING, code. Some of it uses ACCESS for crying out loud. If you don't know exactly "his" way, you can easily crash the Server Apps from the admin GUI. Yet, it still works, sort of. (If you don't delete any records.)

Damn VB programmers, no validation of forms before submit, no sanity checks, no freakin tab order. (Unexcusable: First Name - Tab - Start Hour -TAB- Middle Initial -Tab- PIN -TAB- Stop Hour -TAB- Submit -TAB- Last name) Oh the humanity (Computerity? Compu-titty? snicker.)

No offense to our VB using friends, he could have coded it morse and fscked it all up.

Re:TCO

[Creepy Crawler]

Aye aye aye... I didnt understand the scope of the problem. I was worried about being tied to some Windows app through a shim (thats all VeeBee programmers can do), but Access???

Ill admit, the "preety" stuff in Access is nice to have for space-filling charts and other looks-good worthless crap, but shouldnt it be easy to get away from that?

And I have to ask, Did you pay MONEY for that?

Re:TCO

[MrCopilot]

And I have to ask, Did you pay MONEY for that?

I took over during his last year (started helping him DEBUG), The Company did pay him, but poorly. Based on this experience, good example of "you get what you pay for". (They could have paid him a mint and he still wouldn't be able to code his way out of a for/next loop.)

AS 1 IT/MIS/Software Engineer/Embedded Linux Engineer, I just don't see the need to divert my energy to a "mostly working" set of apps right now. Damn, I guess in my case you get four times what you pay for.

Re:TCO

[Creepy Crawler]

Well, err, Good luck..

Sounds like you'll need it.

Useless information

[phorm]

Part of such information is in essence useless because it can be very specific to given parts of the industry. There are areas where linux is still growing and tends to have less stability or support than the more tried-and-true counterparts. Certainly webservers running apache, etc have a good track record, but I've had my share of media apps die horrible deaths when trying to interface with new hardware.

The same applies to windows, but a big point against it there is that windows vendors (and particularly MS) tend to like obsoleting their products in favor of selling new products, with the new products often being required for compatability reasons with other products, but offering little else new in the way of functionality to most users.

Certainly RedHat might fall into the above scenario, but that tends to be the case with anything that becomes a product-based money-making venture... with their more recent push towards support-based revenue they've been churning out less "new versions" and more "updates"

wrong and self contradictory

[twitter]

What she says is that you can't know something else is cheaper if you can't break down where all your money goes. That's nonsense favorable to M$'s complicated licensing and the innumerable "support" demands of software that sucks. It should be obvious that software that has none of these problems is cheaper to own.

Re:wrong and self contradictory

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical psycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.

I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.

If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. I mean, this is an article about email disclaimers, right? The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx. WTF?

Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.

More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one.

Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.

More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories, more offtopic FUD and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants, promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS, apparently (that first one is a winner). I mean,

typical Microsoft.

[twitter]

In essence - if you don't even know what you're doing with what you have, don't make it worse by changing it to something else that's so different.

Yes, that's what she says. It's so typical of Microsoft:

1. Make something that's complicated, sucks, undocumented with licensing that's even more difficult.
2. Tell your customers they are stupid because they don't understand what you've not told them.
3. Tell your customers that nothing could be better than what you have to offer.

If anyone treats you that way, you can be suer of only one thing: they are ripping you off.

Re:typical Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical psycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.

I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.

If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. I mean, this is an article about email disclaimers, right? The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx. WTF?

Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.

More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one.

Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.

More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories, more offtopic FUD and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants, promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS, apparently (that first one is a winner). I mean,

free software vs Free Software

[nadamsieee]

The point that DiDio seems hellbent on ignoring is that no well informed person is arguing that F/OSS is better because its free (as in free beer). The informed folks are (rightly IMHO) arguing that Free Software is much more valuable (in terms of $$$ as well) in the long run because it is Free (as in Free Speach).

No vendor lock-in allows a business to have real choice. And having a real choice in your infrastructure can give you an advantage over your competitors. At the very least, your vendor can't hold your data hostage in a proprietary format during the next upgrade cycle.

About face

[reclusivemonkey]

1) Post pro-Microsoft traffic generator to /.
2) Realise mistake, put Linux spin on next submission
3) ...
4) Profit!

she got it backwards

[cahiha]

"The thing about Linux is, you can talk about a free, open operating system all you want, but you can't take that idea of free and open and put it into a capitalist system and maintain it as though it is some kind of hippie commune or ashram, because if you can do it like that, at that point I'm like, 'Pass the hookah please!'"

In fact, you can take the idea of "free and open" and put it into a capitalist system, and it works. It works spectacularly well, because it's an efficient way of doing business when it comes to software. If it didn't work, so many companies wouldn't be using it.

DiDio's economic prescription for the software market is instead Stalinist government or military dictatorship, with a few companies like Microsoft making all the decisions. It's DiDio's belief in the idea that any single big organization can make efficient decisions that is mistaken.

See, this is the thing

[einhverfr]

I have many customers who have gone with Linux over Windows. In these cases, their TCO has been higher but not because of what you think (my prices for support are pretty competitive).

Basically, you have a very flexible system with Linux. Customers start out with something which meets 90% of their needs, but start dreaming about what the system could do. For this reason, they often end up building something that exactly meets their needs. The software if Free but having someone really who can make things work *exactly* the way you want them to is a more expensive freedom.

Re:See, this is the thing

[gnuorder]

That is a very good assessment except you would have to hire someone to get exactly what you need with windows too. In that case you have to either hire a company to rewrite their existing code for you or hire a group that can program what you want from scratch. Both would take a lot more time and money than if you could hire one programmer to make changes to an existing open source project. The programmer would have the whole project community to help him, provided the changes are put back into the project of course.

I think you are trying to make the point that once your customers realize how flexable linux is, they order more work from you to make things exactly like they want instead of settling for what comes out of the box.

Re:See, this is the thing

[einhverfr]

That is a very good assessment except you would have to hire someone to get exactly what you need with windows too. In that case you have to either hire a company to rewrite their existing code for you or hire a group that can program what you want from scratch. Both would take a lot more time and money than if you could hire one programmer to make changes to an existing open source project. The programmer would have the whole project community to help him, provided the changes are put back into the project of course.

The difference is that doing this with Windows is usually prohibitively expensive, while doing it with Linux is affordable.

People pay more for Linux systems (even look at the Microsoft-commissioned studies which show a lot of *consulting* fees) but they do this because they are investing in an infrastructure that they have complete freedom to make work for them.

I think you are trying to make the point that once your customers realize how flexable linux is, they order more work from you to make things exactly like they want instead of settling for what comes out of the box.

Yes. That is part of it. But more than that, if someone says "I want Windows to have (name exotic feature here)" it is far more expensive to go out and get this done than it is with Linux.

Article defaced already

[Shaper_pmp]

The article also describes her as "a[sic] SCO whore", and your second quote continues "There really is no such thing as a free lunch. Except for my pussy".

Since this falls slightly short of Wikipedia's normal impartiality I'm guessing some fuckwit's already defaced the article - was the hookah bit really part of the original article, or has it been defaced twice consecutively?

Re:AAARGH! but it's NOT OBVIOUS

[argoff]

One of the greatest things about Linux, hands down, is that you don't need to go thru 10 layers of approval, and notify 5 different departments that you are using it. You just get the CD, install, and run. She seems to imply that that's a problem, trust me, it is not. Linux is not only free as in cost, it is free as in that frees people to be productive without being centralized.

To understand how centralized systems slow down productivity, just check out the USSR. Sure, MS would like all license tracking to be centralized to manimize controll, but that controll is in the best interest of preserving their power - not ours. There is a difference between effective managment and controll freaks, Linux enhaces the former.

Pimping DiDio - Please Don't Feed the Hit Counter

[MooseByte]

"Maybe the person who wrote this has been writing her previous work."

No doubt. Seems to me "an anonymous reader" is either DiDio or her agent trying to jack up the hits related to her "study" in order to show future editors why publishing her tripe is profitable and worthwhile for them.

I say avoid the linked article like the plague.

An objective view??? I think not.

[ficken]

I remember she posted some crap that supposedly took an objective view of the Windows vs Linux TCO. She states there that the server operating systems are 'largely commoditized.' Excuse my language, but how in the h*ll is paying a grand for a Win2K3 server license a commodity? Does she know what a commodity is? Does she know that Linux is free (as in beer)? In addition, I read another article from BusinessWeek that stated that she had publised a "white paper" sponsored by Microsoft and was posted on their site.

How can this be objective and nonpartisan? Everything I have read by this person screams "Steve Ballmer paid me a couple of grand to make my Microsoft marketing look like real research in order to fool people that are still on the fence."

Thats the vibe I get anyway.

And furthermore....

[rhizome]

"I haven't published anything in months since the information coming out about the history of the "SCO vs. The World" cases made me look like an idiot. Watch me astroturf my own story onto Slashdot so I can get some advertising money. Also, as anybody ever told you about a great little company called Amway?..."

Why measure everything?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Let a famous physicist answer your question:

"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.

But when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind."

Lord Kelvin

Re:Why measure everything?

[raftpeople]

Clearly measuring stuff is important, but I would disagree with your statement. There is considerable "knowledge" that is not easily quantified.

The human brain is a complex neural network which operates by finding local minima in an N dimesional space, thereby matching inputs to best outputs for achieving desired goals based on prior experience.

Using that system (which is not really a system of quantification), humans can become "experts" and make very good decisions about the field they are focused in.

Clearly the same applies, to a degree, to the IT field. Not to say there can't be hidden costs or unknowns, but at the same time a person can choose the "best" option based on a combination of many variables measurable and not so measurable.

Laura DiDio is a Shill

[NatteringNabob]

She isn't pro-Microsoft, she is paid by Microsoft indirectly through the Yankee group to present a pro Microsoft slant as if it were independant analysis. That is her job. If the current article appears more 'balanced' it is because even a complete idiot can tell by now that Linux offers orders of magnitude lower TCO than Windows. Just yesterday I was pricing a new computer for a small business that I am an investor in. Unfortunately, they already have an unquenchable 'Microsoft Jones' which means that they will pay almost twice as much for that computer as they would for a Fedora/OpenOFfice solution, and for them, it would work just as well.

Re:Some have

[symbolic]

Her reasoning plays on a most fundamental human trait - laziness. Summed up, it goes like this: "If you don't know what it's costing you, don't do anything." Problem solved.

Re:Linux if you got money, Windows if you got more

[msuarezalvarez]

The front line in Iraq has very little to do with freedom, or at least, has as much to do with it as with WMD.

I cannot but wonder what people need to finally see this: a handwritten explanation by Cheney himself?

This just in

[coolGuyZak]

Does it really matter? Uh... no. (To everyone that has argued the off-by-1 thread).

TCO depends on the staff

[mcrbids]

I'm a big Linux advocate, now running 2 dozen Linux servers spread across the western United States with great success. Years of near perfect uptime, and highly reliable software!

I had an executive of one of my clients ask me about using a Sun/Linux server in his enterprise. I told him about my experiences with Linux and why all my solutions are based thereon. Then, I asked him the $$ questions:

1) How much $$ will the equipment cost? Based on my knowledge of the client, I guessed $10,000.

2) How much will he be paying the staff to manage said server? Based on my knowledge of the client, I guessed $30,000-$50,000. (one full time admin)

I then made the point that while Linux is viable, and I think every qualified technology provider should at least be familiar with it, that it was largely inconsequential whether he went with Linux/Unix/Windows. He'll spend some 15 TIMES as much on the staff to maintain his server than the server itself! What mattered was the STAFF.

As an outsourced administrator, I charge somehwat high prices per hour. I also automate things so that very little time is needed on my part (virtually none!) to keep systems configured, updated, secured, and backed up. Thus, my $90/hour rate can match very favorably with many Windows admins earning $25/hour.

If the staff is resistant to using Linux (and they were) then he should either replace the staff, or go with Windows. I think he chose to go the Windows route...

Re:Spot the karma *****!

[coolGuyZak]

Jeez you mods suck... I guess noone can recognize a joke when they see one.

Um, no.

[CAIMLAS]

You don't need to have an "hourly, monthly, or annual" assessment of downtime caused by your OS to determine TCO.

It's pretty damn easy to look at the people in your IT department(s) and simply count the number of people (and the number of hours) they spend simply fixing and dealing with software issues as their main role. For every hour they spend, figure 10 hours lost by the people that have to use those machines (if it's desktop support) and 100 hours or so for server administrators.

The resulting number will be conservative.

Won't Waste My Time Reading The Article

[Master of Transhuman]

DiDio is a paid Microsoft FUD merchant - period.

And her "sound advice" is just obvious crap intended to cover up her bias.

Get a clue.

My Companies TCO

[sir lox elroy]

I work for an 18 person firm and have 2 Linux systems. One is the firewall, and one is a Web/DB/Mail Server. I make under $15/hour, and am the ONLY IT person for the company, but let's take that $15 per hour. Now then Here are some figures:

Cost of Distro = $0 (Downloaded from Web)

Hours per year I spend maintaining the servers = About 8 for the server, and 2 total prob for the firewall.

All I have really have had to do to the server after initial setup and configure, is update software, and reconfigure a few things as we grew and changed. The firewall was even easier, check for updates regularly and install them as needed.

Initial setup hours = 6 for the server and 1 for the firewall.

NOTE: All the hours include actual hours the machine is doing stuff, like compiling, or Installing the Distro, Etc..., during that time I was often doing something else also.

Firewall hardware cost (Old P166 Compaq Desktop with 2 PCI 10/100 NICs and 1GB HDD) = $40 Used

Server Hardware cost (AMD Athlon XP 2000 Dual 40GB HDD's Software RAID 1, 20GB Boot Drive, 1GB RAM) = $600 When bought New over a year ago.

Total Support Cost is about $255 for both machines (Less actually as I make less than $15 per hour)

Total Hardware cost is about $640.

Total Cost of Ownership for these Boxes is $255, and the Total with Hardware is $895.

I can't speak for the cost of windows on this as I have not priced 2003 server prices or IIS server prices, but I would like to see someone come up cheaper than this.

Lauru DiDio's Qualifications

[Anonymous Coward]

What are Laura DiDio's qualifications? Why should I care what she writes about?

She never meaningfuly replied with details to an earlier request:

http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-20-C odeReview_Story04.html

okay can't let this go

[suezz]

"Faced with its fiercest competitor in the past decade, Microsoft responded with a series of aggressive moves."

well ya - like create a patent arsenal.

I don't care what os people use - just don't lock your company into one platform. That is what is great about linux is that it forces open standards. I have never ran into a web page yet that renders beatifully on Linux does not do the same on windows.

The same cannot be said about windows. There you have the desktop dilema - companies are locked into shitty windows web pages that will only work in windows and not linux. And Bill and Steve are laughing all the way to the bank.

until so called technology boards/persons that make technology buying decisons for enterprises ensures the company sticks to open standards there will be no desktop linux.

it really isn't that hard - just say no to lockin.

anybody who writes for internet explorer only web pages for intranet or extranet web pages should consider a career change.

Stick to open standards!

My study is better

[SlashDread]

Lets talk a Small Business Solution.

Run one or a couple of Windows Terminal Servers and a Debian/Samba Domain Controller plus mail and whatever else you need on the debian box.

Thats it. Customers hug me.

Another cost/licensing issue to consider

[Todd Knarr]

There's another issue of licensing to consider when figuring TCO, and that's your upgrade path and timing in the future. Microsoft has, the last 2 times they went to update their licensing terms, tried as hard as they could to move those terms to an annual-subscription basis, and they don't seem to have given up on the idea. From their standpoint it's a good one, it guarantees their cash flow. If you buy Windows under those terms (and if MS has any say in it you wouldn't have a choice), come time to renew your licenses you might end up in a bind:

1. Upgrading to the most-current version of Windows would be expensive and inconvenient in terms of hardware and third-party-software upgrades, and right now your business is better served by spending that money and effort elsewhere.
2. Microsoft won't accept payment and renew your licenses, because they've end-of-lifed that version of Windows and don't sell annual licenses for it anymore.
3. If the licenses aren't renewed, all of your machines stop working completely the day after the licenses expire, shutting your business down completely.

Considering that Microsoft has tried to make this world a reality in the last 2 iterations of their licensing revisions, and that the majority of the corporate world is using a version of Windows that, while only 1 version behind the most recent stable version, is slated to be end-of-lifed at the end of this year, I think the above scenario has to be taken seriously.

With open-source systems, at least you have options here. Your support contracts may end, but you never have to worry about the actual systems ceasing to work because of that. If you absolutely need support, you can buy it from another party if your original vendor won't give it to you. And in the absolute worst case you can hire some geeks to maintain it in-house. You can decide for yourself, based on your business needs, when and how to upgrade your systems, without any real fear that your vendor will force an upgrade on you at effective gun-point.

Re: Ubuntu

[Baricom]

No.

Re:TCO... HA HA HA HA

[PCM2]

So you believe in an operational philosophoy that says, "Microsoft Windows costs $99. Linux costs nothing. You will save $99 if you go with Linux"?

Honestly, I don't know anyone who makes IT purchasing decisions and thinks TCO is some carved-in-stone, factual number the way you seem to be implying. But talking about TCO is a way of bringing to the discussion the idea that everything has hidden costs and recurring costs, and you can't plan a budget without thinking these through.

Yes, it's virtually impossible to predict exactly what an IT asset will have cost you five years down the road. It's also impossible to predict exactly how many gallons of gas you will have to buy to travel a given number of miles, but they post guesses about that on stickers in new car windows all the time.

predictable comments here

[wmeyer]

As usual, rather than address the substance of any criticism, the majority here, in continual denial of real market forces, attack the messenger.

The woman, whatever her past, makes some intelligent points, and has apparently had the support needed to gather data that is not within the reach of /.

Whether you like her or respect her, or abhor her, the points made are supported by a number of other reporters and surveys that have been taken over time. Linux has developed into a solid, useful tool, but it is not a clear winner over the alternatives. Linux and Windows have strengths and weaknesses. The only rational thing to do is to understand the relative value of both tools, and use the one best suited to the task at hand.

Unless, of course, you prefer to worship Linux as a God.

+3 insightful....

[darkonc]

If I were to post a comment like Dido's touted comments (I'm only reading the headline here, I'm not about to give her any hits), I'd be happy to get +3 insightful for them -- and even then I'd only expect that if it were an early post.

These are all really obvious comments. All they prove is that DiDio isn't a complete idiot. If anything, this just places her other, counter-evidential comments in a worse light, since we now know that she's not completely lacking in processing skills.

I still wouldn't point any of my friends or clients at her site because they might presume that she actually knew what she was talking about and go listen to her other eructations. She can say what she wants, but she's burnt off enough of my ears. I'm done with her.

The wishful thinking, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

is that "need more attention" is not strongly enough worded.

Even, "will need more than twice the attention in most environments," is still back-of-the-envelope.

You need to say things like, "We want our employees to use application X. Is MSWxxxx, Mac OS X.y, or Linux brand Z going to support the app or a suitable substitute with sufficient uptime to pay for the hardware, software, and support?" etc. Then you need to calculate the expected productivity against the support and maintenance costs.

On the other hand, if it costs more to do the analysis than to simply put several of each in the hands of the employees and watch the result, a back of the envelope guess is probably what you want to start with.

Why is /. pimping so many M$ infomercials?

[SgtChaireBourne]

I seem to have hit a good nerve there or pissed off a grammar fascist.

But, really, why is /. suddenly pimping so many M$ infomercials these days? What's up with that? There is a world of difference between providing facts supporting of a minority view and giving free hand to a shill.

That intro can't have honestly been written by someone who knows anything at all about DiDio's history. What's next? Another TCO comparison written by Enderle to support DiDio? We haven't heard any guff out of him for some while.

DiDio often is written off by the Linux camp as being pro-Microsoft...

That's an understatement. She's written off by everyone as being a paid shill for them both directly and via SCO. Groklaw has more details about DiDio's writing.

... she offers excellent, neutral advice ...

C'mon. She's given neither excellent nor neutral advice for her entire career. What universe the writer coming from? Why did the editor let that summary slide?

Re:TCO... HA HA HA HA

[salesgeek]

Using TCO for IT is not a good idea because it is like using powerpoint to develop a web application server. TCO looks goof from a distance, but has very little capability to get heavy programmativ lifting done.

What? What are you saying?

[Rogerborg]

Communism is bad? But Linux is communist. I don't understand.

Re:What? What are you saying?

[argoff]

First off, there was nothing community orientated or sociable about the USSR or any other system that uses the coercive power of government to make people do their will and distribute wealth and property. Communisim and socialisim were hijacked words.

But Linux is very pro community and it is more free market based than proprietary software because information has no natural limits in supply and demand, services and the time people use to create stuff does. MS makes money by using the force of law to create artificial restrictions for the former, Linux makes money via the latter outright.

The USSR has everything to do with centralized authoritarian controll, Linux has nothing to do with centralized authoritarian controll. You're catagorizing things in a way that are too generalized.