Users Reject MS Independent Study Claims

PenguinCandidate writes "End users from various corners of the Web have whole-heartedly rejected Microsoft's claims that an independent TCO comparison between Linux and Windows would be something akin to the second coming. Said one senior Linux architect: 'With Linux and open source, it is possible to arrive in a position where the organization has increased control over its situation [and reduced] its long-term costs. That's a highly desirable outcome and I doubt we'll ever see a Microsoft-funded study which will come to that conclusion.'"

Comments

Seriously...

[vidarlo]

No news to see, please move along.

There is nothing new here. The article says that MS studies is bullshit, and that Linux-vendors funded might be bullshit too... This is the only thing close to a neutral study I've seen about Linux and Windows, and that is about security, not TCO. TCO is not easy to measure.

There's also the excellent report on Total Cost of 0wnership, which concludes that it's less work to 0wn a windows-based computer. Mac scores good on the scale of 0wnership.

Re:Seriously...

[NickFortune]

I really have to disagree if your implication is that relative security is easy to measure between two systems.

I didn't think that was the GPs point at all. I took the point as

In general, Linux machines are more resistant to cracking than are windows boxes.

I think we can agree that it's possible to discuss generalities here. Few would quibble if I said

In general, systems that set a password are more secure than those that do not.

I don't think you can support that implicit assertion that only comparisons of specific systems are valid : feel free to argue the case to the contrary.

switching from MS to a completely Open Source platform normally requires changing the whole software stack. In such cases you can't do a line by line comparison between the two different implementations.

mmm... and if you have a context where it is necessary to compare two specific systems, a line by line comparison is arguably essential. But, given that we can legitimately discuss general relative security, it seems unwise to insist on a discussion only of specific systems.

Linux allows the user to have a far greater degree of confidence for a relatively small expenditure of effort. For example: It is possible to understand your firewall's operation and to validate that there are no vendor supplied backdoors and that there are no port knocking exploits other that those you may choose to define yourself. That is not so easy under Windows. Another example: on windows, it is difficult to avoid internet explorer. Even if you use (say) firefox, the filer windows still use IE dlls and sooner or later one of the IE security holes will make itself manifest. This is far easier to avoid on Linux.

I admit that I like the freedom of Open Source and the ready access to code makes evaluation easier. It is my personal preference but I don't see it as a panacea of security and I'm sick of both sides slinging mud at each other.

Obviously there are no panaceas in the security world, and I'd agree that mud slinging is a waste of everyone's time. But we can, and should, have civilised discussions of the relative merits of both systems - security included. And since security is one are where Linux historically does much bette than Windows, it seems a little unfair to say "come on chaps! let's keep restrict security discussion to specific installations".

Re:Linux and Windows

[SanityInAnarchy]

Windows works out of the box.

My experience has been, Windows works out of the box -- sometimes. When it doesn't work out of the box, good luck getting it to work, ever. Linux works -- all the time -- just maybe not out of the box. And Mac works out of the box, every time.

Say what you will about the reasons, but I have three Linux boxes, one of which dual-boots XP, and Gentoo has been more compatible than XP. I have one Powerbook, and I haven't had a compatibility issue yet. In fact, it had all the Unix tools I needed out of the box -- vim, ssh, mysql, postfix, and so on -- and there were good, working versions of Flash, Java, and Shockwave, worked out of the box in Safari and Firefox.

Oh -- and I'll name one MAJOR compatibility issue with Windows. When I got my new monitor, I discovered it had a small builtin USB hub, so I plugged my keyboard and mouse into it, and ran another cable from it to the box on the floor. My BIOS recognized the keyboard out of the box, my Gentoo (being used to USB) recognized the keyboard and mouse on first boot, without any changes at all, but Windows XP Pro, despite the fact that I'd been on USB before (just not on USB on the monitor), would recognize neither keyboard nor mouse. I'm hoping that it'll start working after I reinstall later, but notice -- on Linux, I didn't have to reboot or reconfigure, but on XP (where stuff is supposed to work out of the box) I have to reinstall?

I believe it would take a new person to linux 800 hours to become aquianted with the new OS enough to be equally skilled as they would be in Windows.

Took my mom maybe one or two.

To a mom or pop who is 50 and just wants to send email, it is a waste

It is a waste to spend $100 on Windows, plus another $50-100 and a subscription fee for AntiVirus, plus some ungodly hourly rate ($50/hour, at least?) for someone to secure their box and teach them all the things that they shouldn't do, which will screw up their computer, plus however much it costs to recover from that.

Compare that to: install Linux once, don't teach them how to save an attachmend and then give it "chmod +x", give them Thunderbird, and you're done. To a mom or pop who is 50 and just wants to send email, it makes sense.

I am a CS student, and for me it actually makes less sense -- I need my windows for games, but Mom and Pop don't play games.

Re:I saved money

[timmyf2371]

Before leaving the Windows world, I used the following programs because I couldn't find a free one to get work done. I'll list the price I remember paying:

WsFtp (~40)
PhotoImpact(80)
Quicken (30)
Spybot - Detect and Destroy (free, donated $15)
MS Access - (300 ?, needed a DB program)
MS Visual Basic ($99, not full version which costs as much as $699 IIRC)
Tiny Firewall (was free when I used it, it seems to be $49 now)

Cost I had to pay: $550 (Not including donation)

You're not really comparing like for like though; let's go through that list again...

FileZilla
The GIMP
Grisbi Personal Finance Manager (Windows & Linux)
Ad Aware
AVG AntiVirus
Services for Unix(make, GCC, etc)
OpenOffice.org Base
Windows Firewall / ZoneAlarm Personal Edition

Total Cost: 0

I would also add that these are still high quality applications - not poor quality abandonware/freeware.

Re:I'm still weary.

[SaDan]

I used to manage over 2500 Windows desktops and servers in 17 locations in North America. I also managed over 200 Linux and Solaris servers at the same time.

Both were equally time consuming, but for very different reasons. Hardware failures on the cheap Dell workstations caused me a lot of grief with the Windows workstations. Constant software updates, installs, and hardware upgrades consumed most of my time with the *nix machines.

I also had no clustering or vendor support, except for Dell techs who were dispatched onsite to replace hard drives and motherboards.

Personally, I prefer working with Solaris and Linux, but that doesn't mean I won't administer Windows boxes to the best of my abilities either.

The point is, it depends on what you do with your Windows machines, and what you do with your Linux/Unix machines. In my case, 2500+ Windows machines didn't take a lot of time to manage once they were set up and locked down. The 200+ *nix servers did take a lot of time to manage, but they also did all of the heavy lifting for the company.

Re:Linux and Windows

[cobras2]

I'm exactly the same... err, well, except my dad is a computer tech and my mom is stuck on games (pac-man and that sort of thing, not *real* games like Battlefield, GTA, etc ;) ).

I did manage to get one of my sisters to use linux, though, and so far she's had very few problems, all of which were with particular programs, not with the OS.