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Ask OSDL CEO Stu Cohen About Linux TCO Studies
This morning OSDL and OSDL member Levanta jointly released a study done by Enterprise Management Associates called Get the Truth on Linux Management. For years, a proprietary software company in Washington State has run what they call a Get the Facts campaign about Linux, full of studies that invariably show Linux to be expensive, hard to maintain, and less than totally secure. Stu Cohen, as CEO of OSDL, a group "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise," will happily answer your questions about Linux vs. Windows studies and the myths and FUD that seem to hover over them. Expect Stu's answers to the 10 - 12 highest-moderated questions later this week.
This may seem like an inane question but why don't I see more of a push to get Linux into the realm of academia?
I know that Ubuntu has made strides to incorporate themselves into learning environments but where is the effort to alert students (primarily other than computer science majors) to the benefits of Linux?
When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, a friend handed me a CD distribution of Debian that would change my life. I knew of the Linux labs in the University but only now did they interest me. I'm now getting my masters at George Mason University and I don't believe there's a single Linux machine on campus. In fact, the whole Computer Science department has only two Sun servers to offer me an account on! Everything else is Microsoft!
Now you may lay claim that every computer science major these days is running Linux anyway. But how about the other areas of study? I used to take music theory and people would rant and rave about their Macs or one of various composing suites in Windows. I tried explaining that Linux has (certainly more affordable) solutions to offer in this department too but no one would even listen to me. It's not like they were mixing platinum selling records, they were just looking for software to write sheet music with.
I think that both Apple and Microsoft realize that the toys people have in college become the toys they demand in real life. So there are all these efforts to garner the student's interest hoping that they will use them in their careers.
They make it free (which Linux already is), they make it easy and they make it available.
So how about it? Why isn't the Linux community minting install discs and distributing literature on campuses? Why isn't Linux tailoring cheap solutions to K-12 schools that don't have the money for Windows anyway? Why do we risk letting someone leave academia without ever experiencing the real fruits of it?
If you are doing this (and I just don't know about it), what steps have you taken?
My work here is dung.
What I would really like to know is why Linux or Windows? Why hasn't there been a really good study that included BSD, Solaris, OSX, or even licensed variants of Unix? Is it all about Linux or is it about better operating systems?
--- Location Unknown
Why would you expect that the answers of someone "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise" would be more objective, in any way, than any of the reports created by pro-MS companies?
It just doesn't make sense...
Since almost all of these studies are funded or organised by a party which appears to be inherently for or against one of the things being studied, will it be possible to find anyone willing to compare them impartially? After all, how many people would believe an Open Source company to be any less biased than MS when it comes to comparing their products?
Game dev and music blog
How can we fix the problem of the way TCO studies handle security? In so many of them every OSS application under the sun gets tallied against Linux systems, regardless of how obscure, or unrequired that application may be. Yet all of the 3rd party things that have holes in them rarely seem to even get looked at when talking about Windows security. Firefox for example seems to get tagged frequently when talking about Linux security in these studies, but Firefox isn't integreated into Linux, and it runs on both platforms. IE on the other hand is integrated into the OS, sure you can not use it, but there is a ton of junk in Windows itself that requires the various bits and pieces of IE to operate correctly. What is it going to take for these studies to finally start comparing apples to apples in regards as to what really is part of the OS and what is required for it to run?
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
How many rounds would you go, one on one, against Steve Ballmer in an auditorium full of chairs?
Say I wanted to switch from Windows Server 2003 to Linux in a company of about 400 people with the same equipment I already have, generally speaking how long would it take and how much would I need to invest?
Do I need to hire several Linux experts just to get it up and running?
Would you expect this to be relatively easy or would it be very complicated and time consuming?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Especially not in a heated market like the OS biz. Who can tell what's "better" or "worse"? To what scale do you measure? And even if you find a way to compare them, what tells you that we won't see the same phenomenon that benchmarks sparked in the CPU and Graphics sector, companies that trim their products to perform perfectly in the artificial test environment (and really suck sometimes in everyday appliances)?
Do I need graphics on a server OS? Do I need highly sophisticated user permissions on a single user machine? Do I need support for 10 billion hardware pieces? Do I need flying pages when copying? Is it important that you can trim the system to run even on a P90? Do I want to be able to use the most recent fads in anti-aliasing and pixel shading? Do I need to be compatible with 100 other formats across 20 OSs? Do I need or want to customize my kernel? Does it make sense to cram the GUI into the system (and the internet browser as well)? Is it useful to ram the Mailreader into the system so tightly that it's virtually impossible to get rid of it?
No offense, but who are you to answer those questions for me?
So which system is "better"? Neither. Or both. Or it's really one of them. It just depends on who you are, how much you know (or want to know), how flexible you would like to be, and most of all, what you want to do with your machine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... why don't they use it?
Almost every PDF document on the OSDL website has been created on a Windows PC or on a Mac. Even the Desktop Linux Survey Report shows:
$ pdfinfo DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005.pdf
Title: Microsoft Word DTL_Survey_Report_v4.doc
Creator: Word
Producer: Mac OS X 10.4.3 Quartz PDFContext
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Part of the problem here is that when comparing a Linux OS to Windows, you have to recognize the fact that Windows comes bundled with a browser. It is part of the OS and you know that few users want a computer that cannot browse the web. So, to be fair, you have to compare competing OSes on like terms and this means including a web browser with linux-based operating systems.
Most distributions include Firefox in their installation. Yes, it's true, Firefox is not linux. But then if you start going down that path, we'll start to see people going to the extreme of saying, KDE is not Linux, glibc is not linux, linux is a kernel, etc... We have to draw the line somewhere. So, we include browsers in the comparisons. But, we can't include browsers like Konqueror because not everyone uses KDE. We have to use a browser that the majority of users actually use. On Windows, this is IE. On linux-based OSes, this is mozilla/firefox. It just needs to be stated as a caveat that Firefox security holes exist on both platforms as with any application that runs on both.
It's a Serious Question. Don't TCO costs end up coming down to how much you will pay employees, how many employees you need, and the price of software? Shouldn't any capable manager be able to estimate the costs themselves? After all, I'm certain TCO varies wildly from workplace to workplace, considering what kind of system is already in place, what software is readily available for an OS, and what skills your current employees have.
My question is: is there really a use for these reports other than for 'defense': positive propaganda versus negative propaganda?
As an aside, do these studies take into account the availability and flexibility of currently extant software? Is there even a way to turn that information into TCO?
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Maybe the TCO summaries are right after all?
Atleast partially that is.
Using the linux road, you have to pay competent people salary for actually knowing something about the system they're dealing with.
Anyone can get windows server up and running after 10 minutes of reading help files, but it won't be secure by a long shot.
I guess same applies for linux in some ways, but it's like comparing iron ball and snow ball in hell.
Both will melt down eventually if left unmaintained, but it's just matter of how long it takes.
And longer it takes, the more profit you make.
TCO might be higher, but you simply get more work done when your IT department doesn't have to spend 2 days every week reinstalling all workstations.
And getting more work done increases profits and in the long run, brings down the TCO, even if it's higher at the beginning.
TCO surveys are statistics, and statistics always tell what the collector wants them to say.
It's just matter how you count things.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Ernie Ball goes Linux if you havn't seen it yet. There is alot of noise about these mythical enviroments that are pro windows or pro linux, but here is a good example of a real world switch. Ernie Ball makes guitar strings, so there really isn't any internal bias about who to support beyond it being a business decision. It is also a bit of an entertaining story on how they dealt with the MS strongarming about their licenses.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Why would anyone expect that the criteria of someone "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise" would be more objective or that the measurements would be more accurate than any of the "studies" done by pro-Microsoft companies?
I've seen pro-Microsoft studies that "extrapolate" data out for 5 years to get their "TCO" figures.
Not to mention that "TCO" figures are meaningless when compared between different companies. There are too many variations between the tech staff, the users, the apps, the hardware, remote vs local users, and so forth.
I'd guess the only fair way to pit one platform against another would be to offer a scenario - client company X has a list of specific needs and requirements - and let teams of experts of either party deploy their solution. Mano an mano.
Then when the smoke has settled, they are compared with regards to cost for things such as licenses, staff, etc.
It would also be important to note the differences in the solutions to the client.
Will the MS solution be simpler to manage, to update? Will the Linux solution require less tweaking a year later? Will there be hacks beknownst only to the people who set up the solution.
And to make it all worth while - these contests should be arranged regularly and have different levels of difficulty and scope.
Call it "OS Deathmatch" or something silly like that and offer prices. Host it at sports arenas. Set up a fair with computer gear for sale at the entrance.
Invite thousands of low- and high-profile geeks. Invite crackers to attempt to find vulnerabilities with the solutions.
Invite companies with real-world cases to get the contestants to work on their requirements. Let them sponsor the show and in return get the elite solutions.
Not only would this generate tremendous media coverage and potential income for entrepreneurs, it will also make for much more fair scrutinizing of the software than the current crop of shady "independant experts".
Do you expect Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista release to help or hinder adoption of linux on the desktop and how can the open source and linux communities best take advantage of the sometimes-artificial commercial software upgrade cycle?