Slashdot Mirror
Windows Bumps Unix as Top Server OS
Ivan writes "
Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to a new report from IDC.
Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers, IDC analyst Matthew Eastwood said of the firm's latest Server Tracker market share report. "It's the first time Unix was not top overall since before the Tracker started in 1996.""
do you think it will last? Is Windows picking up momentum or is Unix losing momentum?
... if "Unix" is Linux, OS X and the various surviving Unixes. This is (way) less impressive if it's only the latter.
This probably reflects the massive number of smaller servers that are out there, which often have Windows installed. In our organization, Windows servers tend to have a single application on them (typically by request of the vendor), while our Unix and AS/400 servers tend to have dozens of applications on them.
The irony is that Windows applications often "don't play well together", making it almost a requirement that they get a dedicated piece of hardware. As a reward for this problem, their rankings are boosted.
What about server hardware sold without an operating system?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
How is this under GNU ( GNU is Not Unix). Anyway is it a loss of market share for Unix or Linux?
Does this take into account the fact you pay extra when you purchase Windows servers as you pay for the OS, as opposed to no microsoft tax when you get a Linux/BSD/WhateverNix? There are many free Unix operating systems available.
Okay - but are they equal in sale price?
What weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers? They both weigh the same but you do end up with a lot more feathers.
I meta-moderate because I care.
I have not RTFA, but I would guess the reason MS beat Unix is because Linux is picking up. I'm curious how much of this is real 'gain' for MS, vs Unix 'loss'.
Sometimes you want to patch, reboot and repeat. Stability is so *boring*.
Way to go Microsoft! In the Window's versus Linux war, sales is the comparison you will always win!
Could it possibly be that Unix server sales are down because Unix servers (non-free) are being replaced with Linux servers (free)? How surprising would it then be that the dollar value spent on servers is lower for Unix?
Carpe Daemon
With the rise of non-Microsoft applications and OSs, that Windows Server would manage to overtake Unix. I personally prefer Microsoft's products, but concede that Unix is a stable, dependable platform, and a quality one. It surprises me that Windows would ever overtake it, short of something going wrong with Unix. Must be the result of Microsoft's excellent advertising and public relations :).
Comp Sci courses that are paid by Microsoft for this. Sad day indeed.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
doesnt this really just suggest that windows servers need regular replacing to keep doing their job while old unix hardware keeps doing its job just fine?
TIAEAE!
From TFA:
And in another first, fast-growing Linux took third place, bumping machines with IBM's mainframe operating system, z/OS. Linux server sales grew from $4.3 billion in 2004 to $5.3 billion in 2005, while mainframes dropped from $5.7 billion to $4.8 billion over the same period, Eastwood said.
"Sales" being the operative word. How would one fit the free Linux options into this equation, I wonder?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Note the article says "sales", and not "actual usage". Unix servers are dependable... why buy something new when your OS functions perfectly fine?
Netcraft confirms it; Unix is dying.
Pretty silly to count Unix and Linux separately.
We purchased five brand new Dell rackmountable servers last month. When we got them, we burned in some linux and threw the windows disks in the trash...
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
The company I work for generally buys Dell servers with no OS, on which we then install Windows Server 2003 (from our MSDN subscription) or Linux, depending on what the server will be used for. I don't imagine we're the only ones, either; I wonder how common this practice is, and what effect it has on the (fairly meaningless) figures?
-Stephen
The numbers - they make me sleepy...
:D
But note that the article mentions the growth of both Linux _and_ Windows. This is really about the ongoing decline of pure UNIX mainfarmes - something we've all been aware of for years.
The fact that Windows OS now outnumbers UNIX boxes is neither suprising nor noteworthy. They've been chipping away at the server market for ages. Bound to happen eventually.
But what I would be more interested in is out of all these switchers, what's the ratio that switch to Linux compared to Windows? Linux growth is faster (Upgrades along the Windows path don't count, we're talking complete platform migration) I believe. But naturally the title of the article gives enough bias to encourage readers to miss that little tidbit. Or maybe using the phrase "Windows beats Unix" is the journalistic equivalent of shouting "Fire!" when it comes to grabbbing attention...
"...So I hung back and lurked. For 18 months. Can't beat a good old-fashioned lurking."
What about Windows pricing? Didn't that rise? That could account for at least the winning by .2 billion...
So, nothing much to see here really as this has been coming a long time.
Anyway, for the first time Linux conquered the third spot when it comes to revenue and it continues to be the fastes growing system.
It seems like this study gets published about every two weeks on Slashdot, and everyone has misconceptions about it.
The funny thing is that people's reactions are entirely based on the headline. If Slashdot runs the story as "Linux Server Revenue Up!", half the comments are about Microsoft going out of business or whatever. If they run the larger Windows numbers in the headline, everyone complains.
Anyway -- Here's a laundry list of objections that will no doubt appear:
+ This study doesn't count the servers I have running Gentoo/Debian/etc
-- Most of the revenue reported is actually hardware, so yes it does
+ How would they know what I'm running on my servers? I didn't get a preinstalled OS
-- User surveys, statistical methods, etc. It's not an exact count.
+ My *nix servers have 234 CPUs and run more applications than my Windows servers
-- Because the survey counts $$$ and not CPU or box counts, this sorta works itself out, but I guess this is valid.
+ We put Linux on our i486-33 Servers
-- Who cares? IDC doesn't, they're counting new server revenue.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
But I wonder how they determined what list to put a purchase in when a company buys somthing like an HP Proliant server. I've worked places where there are racks and racks of DL360s running Unix and other places where they are Windows. Seems like a somewhat dubious report.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I understand IBM's AIX servers, and HP's HP-UX servers, etc. But how do they know what OS i will be running when I buy a new intel server. My organization have dozen's of intel servers running linux that are the same model we use for our windows servers. Why do I feel that the sales of the machines we use for linux are given to the windows stats?
How many of these Windows based machines will have the OS scrapped as time goes by, to be replaced by Linux or FreeBSD etc ... ?
Don't get me wrong, many organization do pay for Linux service/support for service, however, on the ends of the spectrum many organizations do small installs.
Small business, bulk hosting companies, and realy gigantic companies tend to roll their own Linux or use Free as in Beer distributions. Look at Google, for example. Note that Debian controls 16% of the linux server market: http://www.computerweekly.com/Article1319
That's 16% that goes unrepresented in marketshare numbers. Sun's OSS Solaris is going to have this same effect in the future.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
As a system administrator who has recently spent time trying to mitigate the security consequences of using NFS for a large campus network, I wonder if Windows may not have some advantages.
NFS security is Unix security writ large and networked: if it's not root it's not important. If your machine has the right IP, and you've got root on the box, switch your UID and NFS gives you all priviliges for that user. And NFS is the ubiquitous Unix Network Filesystem! Goddamn, what a security mess. I'm looking at alternatives like OpenAFS or Coda -- but hell, those aren't very mainstream. I could just use samba for everything I guess. But why not go all the way and run Active Directory servers?
The question, about 2-3 years down the road, is how many companies will become disenchanted with their flaky Windows servers, wipe them clean, and install Linux on them? Up front sales are nice and put money in the pockets, but latency is a far more important measue of who's winning.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
That's right, Linux is a whole lot worse because it's selling negative amounts.
Windows is clearly the winner!!
Brought to you by your local chapter of Hollywood Accountants
How can you sell something that is FREE???? How many unaccounted UNIX installations are free software downloaded from the net or CDs installed on 50 servers?
A number of dinosaurs is being surrounded with a lot of mammals...
Pretty silly to count Unix and Linux separately.
No, it isn't; it would be silly to lump them together.
TFA was about sales. There are commercial Unix variants that cost money; Linux by itself does not. (There may be costs, e.g. when the Linux vendor includes N months of support, but this is not the same as paying for the OS.) Lumping 'non-free' and 'free' [as in beer] together would be like putting two dissimilar things in the same category.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
It's nice to have two products which are pretty much equivalent in performance. I think this is the type of situation which is good for competition, and good for everyone involved. Even if Microsoft does take the lead in server marketshare, I think that's just naturally reflecting the skillset of the workforce. Many people who are becoming system administrators now only know how to use windows, and probably haven't even used dos.
Folks, don't confuse sales with usage. There's no accurate way to count Linux sales. Even if you count commercial distro sales, it still can't reflect true Linux usage. Take a deep breath and understand what the statistic is saying.
{ Waiting for Microsoft evil empire conspiracy posts... }
Slashdot = alt.religion.windows.mpaa.riaa.sucks
I'm switching to Windows!
Maybe its because Sun is giving away servers. For free. No cost. And each free server would add ... let me think ... ummm ... zero dollars to the total.8 /
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/2005121
Maybe not.
do you think it will last? Is Windows picking up momentum or is Unix losing momentum?
Or is it simply that Linux is chewing into UNIX market share? They way that headline sounds one might think this is a case of pure market share gain for Microsoft at the expense of UNIX which is probably not the case here.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Microsoft's success on the server side was unavoidable for a number of reasons:
.NET platform. They can acquire alot of smart people who will do good work for them.
1. They dominate the desktop, which gives them excellent exposure to all the business leaders who actually make the decisions about what software to purchase.
2. Their products are reasonably stable (although individual applications sometimes crash, like Outlook, my desktop, Windows XP Pro, hasn't blue screened in a long time!). All the patches are quite inconvenient too.
3. They have a huge amount of money to put into their development tools and
4. The huge increases in performance available on a simple "desktop" servers, say compared with 5 years ago, has enabled fairly complex applications to be run on them. (This is also helps linux grow). 5 years ago a person who would have suggested putting Oracle on windows would get laughed at, now at least if people laugh it is not as loud or as long.
5. Microsoft knows how to profit from software, whereas many of the unix companies counted on making profits from hardware. Not a good business to be in when cost keeps falling so drastically for a given level of performance.
It has taken them a long time to come this far, I think longer than most people anticipated, but now they have achieved a significant level of success.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
Doesn't this help the EU Competition Authority to argue that Microsoft is actively extending their monopoly on desktops into the server market? Does it therefore also suggest that for once a "government" is acting on something in time, saving a market from an extending monopoly before the monopoly covers the second market? It doesn't do anything to make Microsoft comply with court orders though.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I have not RTFA, but I would guess the reason MS beat Unix is because Linux is picking up. I'm curious how much of this is real 'gain' for MS, vs Unix 'loss'.
I have RTFA, and it's difficult (maybe impossible) to test your hypothesis from the numbers in the press release.
But from this related document I can do a back of the envelope estimate of growth for 2005 in absolute dollar terms:
Windows: $17.7 billion * (1-.047) * 4.7% = +$0.79 billion
Linux: $5.7 billion * (1-.208) * 20.8% = +$0.94 billion
Unix: $17.5 billion * (1+.059) * -.059% = -$1.09 billion
The middle term is to estimate the 2004 revenue figures from the 2005 figures. The estimate (a major caveat) is that I use the 4Q05/4Q04 growth rate (in %/year) instead of the 2005/2004 growth rate, since, if I understand correctly, the former figure is the only one they give to us.
Anyway, it really does look like the decline in Unix server revenue is due more to replacement by Linux than to replacement by Windows. That said, Windows had quite a healthy growth rate, so Microsoft really is doing well for itself in this area.
Upon hearing the news, Steve Ballmer was happy to hear that his long-thought-out plan to Fucking Kill(TM) UNIX was well underway. When he asked what was next, his advisers told him he'd have to wait, as the database of things to Fucking Kill(TM) had grown too large for Windows to handle so it had to be converted to a UNIX box.
Steve Ballmer is now in the process of Fucking Kill(TM)ing his entire staff.
They got snookered by their rep, telling them they had to have an OS with them, or they thought the same- and Windows is the only option, in many cases, from Dell's website and their reps.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
How many windows desktops end up as Linux servers?
Certainly we have dozens of the things. Old, but maxed out desktops acting as essentially disposable servers running some critical network services (redundantly). I think we *might* have purchased one real Linux server, from Dell, or did it come with Windows automatically? I forget. So our ratio is more than 20:1. Makes a nonsense of the sales figures.
Deleted
Well if what I am reading is correct Unix is $17.5 Billion + Linux $5.3 Billion = $22.8 Billion. Microsoft is $17.7 Billion. Last I checked the *nix camp is still $5 billion ahead of M$. Not to mention that there was no number on Mac OSX in there. Just another feel good bullshit article trying to pump up M$.
One, they sold more in "value"... maybe they just charged more per?
Also, maybe people were happy with their reliable Unix servers that were installed years ago, and just didn't need to replace them. These figures don't say much about the actual used, installed base.
By installing Windows, IT managers and execs need only the 800-number lifeline versus paying a IT professional to manage an open source-based system. I have seen too many times a Unix system replaced with x86s running Wintel and employees shown the door immediately afterwards. Canning people does wonders for taxes, social security matching, paying into insurance plans, etc. Microsoft says people are not a good investment.
...Bill quietly chuckles to himself, satisfied that his $.2B purchase of Windows servers had gotten him the results he wanted...
'Now for some serious cooling!'
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
There is one other thing that I've noticed that people have not been mentioning. Yes, Linux and Solaris are free, so they're not valid comparisons just based on that. But no one seems to take into account anything about longevity or durability.
For example, anyone who has worked with Sun hardware knows that for the most part Sun servers are built like frickin' tanks. Even Sparc 10s and 20s are still in heavy use my a lot of major corporations for small tasks, like test servers, low-capacity web servers, file sharing, and so forth. Most WinTel systems - even servers - are built with a lot of off-the-shelf parts or come with parts that are not what one would call "high quality".
The UNIX market is not a commodity market, unlike the WinTel market. Most UNIX shops will keep beating the shit out of their UNIX hardware because they know that it can take the punishment and keep on chugging along. UNIX shops also know that you don't need a bazillion GHz just to run a database if it's configured properly. This also equates - or at least has equated until recently - to more expensive hardware. The bean counters *always* balk at that, regardless of the justification.
This is different than a lot of Windows shops. Most Windows shops keep having a need to upgrade because of the common curse of Windows: bloatware and ever increasing hardware requirements. Additionally, most of the Windows mindset equate GHz and number of CPUs with speed and efficiency. As we all know, that's not necesarily the case, but it's great marketing material for HP, Dell, and the WinTel server crowd to keep getting their hardware out the door. I've seen this dozens (if not hundreds) of times in various organizations as a consultant. The ability to convince management to purchase a lot of less-expensive, new Windows equipment is much easier than trying to convince them to purchase fewer, more expensive UNIX servers.
This sales report is nothing but irrelevant fodder for future Microsoft FUD.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Only if you exclude Linux, then Windows is at the top-spot. If you don't look at dollars changing hands, but actual USAGE, Unix and Linux combined are far ahead of Windows. (Just look at Netcraft) Linux is at a big disadvantage at such surveys because more often than not Linux is not sold with the computer but later installed. Nevertheless, Linux is the fastest-growing segment of the market even in this heavily biased way of counting.
I paid $0 for my Linux server and didn't "log" my installing of Linux anywhere. What are those stats showing? Nothing.
Plus what has sold lately is totally not telling for the whole picture (ratio of *nix to Windows servers).
While I'm not giving up Windows as my desktop OS, it's simply not making a good server OS for the moment.
If one counts all unixlike operating systems, you get $17.5 billion for Unix plus $5.3 billion for Linux equals $22.7 billion. This compares to $17.7 billion for Windows. *nix is the clear winner.
When it came time to look into getting more UNIX based servers at work we took a new path over RedHat/AIX/SCO and settled on GNU Debian Linux. We are now running three new servers (in the 2005 year) using UNIX(-like) on top of our existing UNIX/Windows setup.
So really sales figures can no longer really be an indicator of what is really out there now that businesses are happy to buy blank servers and load their favourite Linux/BSD distro...unless many corporation's are running pirated versions of Windows on their servers. Which I for one would seriously doubt.
I ate your fish.
It is incredibly difficult to produce a "market" leader measure without some consideration to the way that the market is measured. Fundamentally, that method determines the leader. Consider the obvious:
The market measure should be considered a dubious statistic, much like a political one. Raising the overall spending on education means nothing. Raising the overall spending per student, that means something. If you raise overall spending per student in constant dollars (inflation adjusted dollars), now you are really producing an accurate measure. The fact that most people can't understand basic comparisons--read the book Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos--leads to this fallacy of a measurement.
...tizzyd
The idea here is sales. This does not talk about usage, swithing, or anything else.
So, all of the free downloads and installs are not counted here. Windows had a lot of sales, unix lost some and Linux increased in sales. That's dollars and cents not usage.
With all of the free solaris downloads, linux downloads, and BSD downloads it's no suprise that unix purchases are going down. Why pay for it if you can get it free?
Evolution or ID?
What ever happened to the "right tool for the job" mantra?
.NET platform because that's your expertise or whatever, then go Windows, IIS, and SQL Server. If you want fast webserving go with *nix, Apache and your flavor of Database.
.NET usage is ramped up and tends to be faster developed (though probably not as clean) than PHP or Java apps.
If you are developing a
I think this is more relevant to the fact
Just a thought.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
In other news, computer viruses are at an all time high!!!
Between machines you trust. All competent admins have known that for decades. AFS is your best bet, it's very stable and easily available on most platforms but is a bitch to configure initially which is why nobody uses it on small installations. You gotta have site wide buy in the beginning before it's worth it.
Deleted
Microsoft market share myths versus user base
Developers: We can use your help.
Does that include the company that buys 500 servers from Dell that only sells with Windows which was then deleted and Linux put on those machines. I think that the sales numbers do not reflect operational numbers. It sucks when you have to buy the OS you don't want just to get a good deal on common machines with support.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Linux isnt UNIX. FreeBSD isnt UNIX either.
Are these two taking market share away from UNIX?
Is Windows the top spot because BSD and Linux are different from Solaris and HPUX? Or because commercial UNIX is getting cheaper?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
And they're all part of my botnet!!! mahahahahwhwhwwhwhwaaa!
"5. Microsoft knows how to profit from software, whereas many of the unix companies counted on making profits from hardware. Not a good business to be in when cost keeps falling so drastically for a given level of performance. "
I think Apple's shown you can do a pretty good job profiting on hardware as a UNIX vendor. The trick is not to be a one-trick pony. They've diversified into personal entertainment, laptops, servers, and a variety of desktops (from profesional dual G5 towers to that cute little Mac Mini).
The market for pretty much anything running an Alpha or a E10K server is going to be smaller than several markets.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Micros~1 knows very well windows can't really compete against solaris, aix and all the unix vendors when it comes to quality
Micros~1 wanted to take the server market, but they don't like competing. What server do? Give services to clients. Who are clients? Desktops. Who ows 95% of the desktop market share? Microsoft. So just integrate windows server and clients so tighly, that people will choose windows as server. Not because windows is a better server OS, but because it allows good integration with clients, which is what servers are about. (Unix fragmentation didn't help to fight Micros~1 either). Unix dominates in the field where there're open protocols and there's a lack of licenses, patents, and shit: HTTP, FTP, email, etc. In other words: where companies can compete freely. But when it comes to integrating windows clients, nothing can do it better than a windows server.
This wouldn't be a problem if Microsoft weren't using propietary and closed technologies to forbid other companies from competing. It's not a coincidence that the European Commison asked micros~1 "to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers. This will enable rival vendors to develop products that can compete on a level playing field in the work group server operating system market. The disclosed information will have to be updated each time Microsoft brings to the market new versions of its relevant products" and fining Micros~1. It's not a coincidence that IBM, red hat, sun, nokia and real are complaining to the European commission either.
This is in europe, in eeuu people tried this and failed. It's somewhat ironic that the country which is supposed to love capitalism is quickly becoming a place where companies can't compete and users are told waht and how they must see ej: a film (DRM). Communists have not gone away, but it's not russia where they're this time....
So many of the bah Windows posts are just hilarious. Changing it to number of servers, adding Linux to Unix, anything to beat the evil empire. Yet I have noticed more of our customers are dropping their Unix boxes and going with windows so I have to believe these reflect reality. Personally I don't see a real difference that would be worth dropping an existing server for, but it ain't my money. When will all of you redmond haters wake up and realize what you are spewing just isn't true anymore....Windows is a good platform and it helps me because most people use it giving me one platform to code to, both personally and professionaly. GO Windows!!!
Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers,
Update: It was later found that the forementioned sales figures were inaccurate. The true numbers were skewed and mistakenly put Microsoft on top. The true numbers reflect the fact that Unix servers continued their reign as top seller and Microsoft was still behind.
No further information was available, but insiders say the mistake was caused by a Windows Server 'error.'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, etc.
All available and running great on Windows. So why would an administrator that already knows Windows bother to learn Unix? It is easier to justify the cost of some server licenses from Microsoft than the cost of retraining staff.
i cant get PHP5 to work properly as a module in IIS, can anyone help me. thats why windows servers are so unpopular. ---- gues he was wrong about that
portfolio
it takes four windows servers to do the job of one unix box
It would be pretty stupid to lump UNIX and Linux sales together, given that Linux is not UNIX. As far as I can tell, not a single Linux distribution is certified against the Single UNIX Specification, which any Operating System must be in order to be UNIX.
They share similarities to be sure, but they are not the same and should not be lumped together any more than Windows and Linux should be lumped together.
The KIA passed installs over Mercedes proving that KIA is a superior automobile.
if windows was worth using as a server, you would no need SO MANY to do SO LITTLE
Unless you want a non windows OS to run decent. Why do I use Virtual Server instead of a supperior product?
Free MSDN Partner Licenses
ok .. so windows took the number 1 spot over from unix. .. how big an increase did windows server sales grow by? ..wehre did the rest of the sales go? linux ? apple ? bsd ? amiga? dos? where?
BUT
we know that unix was loosing sales. so the question now is
and if the number is not that big
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
I buy Dell computers for my home and don't have to suffer the indignity of them shipping with Windows. I set up a small business account with Dell in my own name and, ta-da! - no Windows - and I get better machines than the regular desktop machines for far less money. I bought a 170L and a flat panel monitor for $499. Pretty hard to beat.
"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you, <-- you are here
then you win."
- Gandhi
Of course we don't expect Microsoft to fight cleanly, so comparisons where "total cost" = "marketshare" are par for the course.
As the saying goes: There are lies, damn lies and statistics.
A. Coward
Can somebody tell me how the prices of enterprise Unix servers and OS (not including Linux) compare with Windows servers?
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
what about all the people that just build the servers themselves for like $500 and install Linux on it?? i don't think they tallied that in their stats.. because there's quite a few people that do that.. not to mention, Win2k3 costs atleast a thousand bucks.. of course the sales are going to show that there were more windows servers installed.. most good sys and net admins build their own servers..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Pehaps this is the result of Linux cutting into Unix's market share? Those that may have purchased Unix instead chose an open source solution? Or does this include Linux?
For Windows every machine (compute node) would need a individual license.
I have 200 GRID machines, 400 SMPs of linux clusters, plus a 20ish linux
machines. (each with hundreds of users/applications). And the software
is FREE on most of these (no license required). So for EVERY linux cluster
that does not have SuSE SLES or RedHat ES/AS, it is not counted, since
there are no dollars required.
It should be the number of SMPs installed (so clusters count on a per-node
basis) and not dollars wasted by companies. I grant sometimes it is needed,
but the majority is just lack of knowledge in companies. (like purchasing
windows to run filesharing versus samba, or email or MS SQL server/MS Access
instead of Oracle/MySql/Postgres).
And really a LARGE SMP should count for more computing power and productivity
than a toy PC that was called a 'server'. IBM Pseries or HP etc..
Mark
People have commented on here that Windows apps 'like' to have their own box. IMO, I think it comes down to the actual cost of HW and mitigating the risk of having multiple 'important' apps on the same HW. If I were an IT manager, I'm thinking that I've got some very important windows apps: A, B, and C I "could" put them all on the same cluster, and they would operate fine; its when you start patching and upgrading them that it begins to get tricky. The other factor is that WIntel HW is very cheap in comparison to SUN/HP - we're talking a fraction of the cost, so why not put each app on its own piece o' HW if the doing so is still a lot cheaper than putting it all on SUN/HP HW. Another cat on here mentioned that MS was forcing the HW vendors to bundle an MS license with HW purchase. This was happening with Dell a while back, but I'm not sure if this is still the case, and I believe that it may have only been limited to desktop sales - but I'm not positive about it. When it comes down to it, WIntel HW is rediculously cheap compared to SUN of HP/UX HW; Cheap enough to make it worth while for management to put a single app on one box - even though they have 50 apps to house. So cheap that even when your paying a couple of grand ($3-4) for the OS (W2K3 Server OS) and SUN's OS is free with the HW, you still get more bang for the buck with the Windoze servers, plus less management headaches b/c you've insulated the apps from each other a little more... But, you wiley Unix fans out there, do not lose faith! Sun OS sales numbers should rebound when coupled with the sales of their new AMD chipped boxes. Those things are kicking the crap out comparable Intel boxes, and should generate some impressive numbers for SUN once everyone catches on. Even if the shop is a Windows outfit, I would still seriously consider buying these SUN AMD servers and then just install Windows Server on it, IF that was what my shop's expertise was in... Sincerely, Solaris 10/Opteron Fan Boy
GNU = GNU's Not Unix
GNU makes up half of Linux, so, yes, you are correct. Linux is not UNIX.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If you are right, then msft has a strong TCO argument.
Business is competitive. You can't expect companies to want to pay more than they have to.
here it is:7 4406
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS200
from TFPR(TF press release): Vendor Q4 2005, Revenue Market, Share Q4 2004, Revenue Market, Share Revenue Growth, 4Q05/4Q04
IBM--- $5,555--- 38.4%--- $5,510--- 38.0%--- 0.8%
Hewlett-Packard--- $3,885--- 26.8%--- $3,745--- 25.8%--- 3.8%
Dell--- $1,390--- 9.6%--- $1,295--- 8.9%--- 7.3%
Sun Microsystems--- $1,185--- 8.2%--- $1,330--- 9.2%--- -10.9%
Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens--- $606--- 4.2%--- $680--- 4.7%--- -10.9%
Others--- $1,857--- 12.8%--- $1,952--- 13.5%--- -4.9%
All Vendors--- $14,478--- 100.0%--- $14,512--- 100.0%--- -0.2%
I don't think they take the number of units sold into account...
PS: not good formatting, I know
everyone downmodding this post will be prosecuted for reading my post without first buying a license!!!
All of our servers come with Windows preinstalled but we replace with Linux after the fact.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. - Samuel Clemens
The real meat is several paragraphs in:
Servers costing less than $25,000 accounted for 97% of these sales. So a majority of sales are going into smaller businesses that only know Windows, and will only buy Windows.
It would be more interesting how they counted machines sold without an OS. Were they not counted? Were they in some sort of other category.
And how come IDC comes up with different totals for sales ($51.3 billion) versus Gartner ($49.5 billion)?
What, me worry?
"Unix" is just the proprietary, old-school variants -- so HP-UX, Solaris, probably AIX and some other ones I'm forgetting. (Does SGI still sell Irix?) I'm not sure what they do with BSD.
.NET and Terminal Server stuff; building systems that integrate tightly (one might say incestously) with the client's OS and applications. Personally I haven't seen much indication that Windows servers are really cutting into *nix's core markets -- particularly HTTP and email. Others might be able to provide counterexamples, but in general I think this is a pretty positive report altogether for Linux.
Linux isn't counted in there, it's recorded separately. But even recorded separately, and marked only by hardware sales dollars (not the most flattering number to use, for a FREE operating system that runs on almost anything), it comes in third. So if you bought a server that came bundled with a Windows license, but then installed Linux on it, it's counted as a "Windows sale." The only things, I think, that are being counted are actual "Linux servers," like you can buy from Dell or IBM.
So I think the picture this paints is pretty good for free software. Bad for proprietary Unix vendors, but the writing's been on the wall for a while, guys. Hope you cashed out your options when the going was good.
The growth in Windows servers is unfortunate but expected, as more people want to start doing
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Uhhh, I call shenanigans! The article talks about dollar amounts, but not unit sales. If folks are using Linux and open source software for their needs then the dollar amounts are going to be lower and the article should say, "Businesses Saving Money By Dumping Windows Server OS". I'm sorry, I just don't believe that there are more businesses buying Windows servers per unit than Linux/Unix. I'd want to see some unit sales numbers, or at least a better breakdown of number of servers and OS they are running.
Unix Sales? So, this doesn't include any FREE operating systems right?
td
hard core geek-ware
Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers That's a lot of Linux liscences !!
When fiction hits reality, dreams have no air-bag.
+ This study doesn't count the servers I have running Gentoo/Debian/etc
-- Most of the revenue reported is actually hardware, so yes it does
You need more servers to provide the same services using Windows. We replaced a tool that was running as one of a dozen applications on a modest sized UNIX box with a Windows version... it was supposed to save manpower and money because we could use a cheap PC instead of 1/12th of an Alphaserver.
We ended up with 2 high end multiprocessor boxes that each cost more than the amortized value of the Alphaserver (which is still running the other 11 apps), an extra employee to support it, plus additional network hardware to isolate the Windows boxes (which was a good thing when Code Red went through). Oh, and a couple more PCs to support the box.
That counted as 5 copies of Windows replacing 0 (1/12 rounded to the nearest unit) copies of UNIX.
+ My *nix servers have 234 CPUs and run more applications than my Windows servers
-- Because the survey counts $$$ and not CPU or box counts, this sorta works itself out, but I guess this is valid.
My *nix servers are typically on slower hardware than the Windows servers. Older hardware, hardware that stays in service longer. We spent more money on Windows, but got less value for it.
+ We put Linux on our i486-33 Servers
-- Who cares? IDC doesn't, they're counting new server revenue.
I care, because my job is providing services, not buying hardware.
If you check out Netcraft's site and their web-server survey, which puts Apache use at ~68% and Microsoft IIS use at ~20.5%, you see a much different picture. I think this contributes positively to the argument many are stating here that quite a number of people no longer purchase a Unix server solution, but rather build something themselves or purchase a server without an OS...and then they put Linux or Solaris or any of the other free OS's on it. Also I don't know that IDC considers a MacOS X solution as 'Unix'.
Netcraft's Web Server Survey:e y.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_surv
Windows is the "top server OS" in sales. The article doesn't include free downloads and other kinds of Linux installs in 2005, just sales.
I wonder what the statistics for servers installed in 2005. I also wonder how Linux stacks up in the overall number of servers in use compared to Windows. Isn't Solaris still the most used server on the web? A cursory google didn't turn up much on this. Anybody have current statistics?
This sig kills fascists.
The article notes that the leaders for Unix sales, IBM, HP and Sun, all had reduced sales figures for Unix based products in recent years. Honestly, I'm not suprised seeing as what these guys charge for their hardware alone, let alone what it must be with a vendor-specific operating system installed on it.
Who is *buying* Unix pre-installed these days? I was under the impression that if you knew what a buck was worth, and already had operations staff to run things, you'd buy some generic blade server or rack w/o software and slap Redhat or Debian on it. The savings would only be forwarded to you now if you've already run your shop like this and just need new hardware periodically.
Another way to look at it: Why go with HP-UX, AIX or Solaris when you can get a comparable setup for free (linux) and go with any vendor's hardware you want?
So of course MS's sales are up by comparison: they foist system updates and upgrades on their userbase at regular intervals, while the competition gets eaten by OSS.
Unix servers are on a decline. That's a given. That's been this way for years. The need for huge servers for a "dumb terminal" setup is gone, this ain't the 70s and 80s anymore. Most small/middle business server solutions now center around file storage and archiving rather than application services.
That's something Windows is supposedly able to handle. ymmv, but allegedly I heard of someone who knew someone who is still not in an asylum who said that he read about a guy who managed to get through to someone who insists he once had a coworker that created a stable Windows server that didn't barf while doing backups, destroying backups and files alike.
So there are actually some brave companies out there who use Windows for their storage.
Now, for file storage and petty services like DNS and other minimal tasks, who needs an expensive Unix solution? If you have a Unix-trained person, you switch over to Linux and get the same for free. If you don't, or if management insists they don't want to be dependent on their IT-guys (and instead prefer to be dependent on the whims of a corporation), you switch over to Windows. Not as stable, but you have your IT guys to blame anyway, and it's still way cheaper than those old IBM machines.
Besides, you can fire your high skilled (and paid) IT pros and hire some minimum wage "I can boot Windows XP!" "Administrators".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look at the numbers. They are *dollar values*. They are not "number of installed servers this year". There's a reason for that.
You know whose lunch Linux has been eating? Solaris's. AIX's. HP/UX's.
You know how much a typical Solaris deployment with commercial servers would have cost? Right. $$$.
You know how much a typical *Linux* server costs? Right. In most cases, nothing. Sure, you can get Red Hat Enterprise and use a commercial Apache replacement and a commercial ssh, but that isn't what most Linux servers I'm aware of are running.
This has been making the dollar size of the market drop like a stone. That says nothing about amount of deployments. That just says that Sun and friends are bringing a lot less money home than they used to, and it's staying with the people who are using the servers.
"Windows Bumps Unix as Top Server OS"? Hardly. "Windows Bumps Unix as Most Expensive Server OS", perhaps.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I think part of the problem is small, cheap, single use Windows servers.
If a company needs to add a new service to their existing list of IT services, rather than adding to the existing UNIX big-iron server that's 10 years old, they buy a cheap-ass Dell box with some sort of Windows preinstalled and add whatever service they need.
An example would be a small database used by sales or accounting. Another would be an internal web server that keeps the company home page. Maybe even a mail server for a small business or remote office. If an application that was maintained at the corporate office is not being handled locally at each remote office, a Windows based server for each location is going to be a cheaper, better fit.
For these applications, it's easier to have some junior IT guy throw together an inexpensive Windows box than it would be to have the old, well paid UNIX guru to add the service to the aging mainframe.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
In many cases, an organization does not want to "mix and match" software or operating systems. Where I worked we wwould still install "office 2000" at locations that buy licenses for "office 2003", etc, because that is the current organization standard. Mix+match would create problems with incompatabilities etc
They're still making use of the 2003 license though, just with a previous version of the software (which is allowed, and sometimes the only way to use software that is no longer sold in the older versions).
I have been reading /. for some time and have come to understand that Windows is not capable of serving the needs of a mid to large size company. It does not work. Furthermore, Microsoft and the Windows operating system have been in decline for years.
Either the TFA lies or, the conventional wisdom of Slashdot opinion is badly mistaken.
The growth in Windows servers is unfortunate but expected, as more people want to start doing .NET and Terminal Server stuff; building systems that integrate tightly (one might say incestously) with the client's OS and applications.
The growth in Winodws servers is "unfortunate"? Why? Or do you just assume we're all fighting the anti-MS jihad? You give no reasons as to why it's "unfortunate", in fact you give reasons for the opposite.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I hate to burst your bubble (and to support Microsoft here on /.), but Active Directory is a base component of Windows Server.
You don't need any additional licenses or software to set up an AD forest; you install Windows Server 2003, any edition, and you're rockin' with Active Directory if you want it. And you don't need any additional Microsoft applications from there to support LDAP; AD is already LDAP-compliant.
There is no magical sale of additional components just to support Active Directory. Only "yup, there's my no-additional-cost directory server," just like your Linux example.
He's just a OSS zealot "OMG I threw away teh EVAL M$", he's probably 13 years old and doesn't even know what "rackmountable" means
Doesn't "rackmountable" have something to do with sex between a woman's breasts?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I am an attorney, but this is not legal advice. If you get your legal advice on slashdot, rush to a psychiatrist.
It *used* to work that way, which came up in one of the antitrust suits. MS had made it cheaper to license windows for all machines than to pay for each machine on which it was installed, pretty much killing off DR-DOS.
They can no longer enter that type of license agreement for all machines sold by a company, but they can still enter it for a particular line of machines, which is why you see some lines that come with windows, and other with a choice of machines.
hawk, esq.
We bought 2 UNIX servers last year. I am running 20 logical partitions on those 2 unix server. By some time later this year we will be running close to 30 copies of AIX (IBM UNIX). Each of these "servers" has the ability to run 160 partition or servers. So in some cases 2 UNIX servers=320.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
How much of this revenue is for updates of older windows hardware/software to XP?
Does there revenue include the price of all hardware that is shipped with XP? Just because they were forced to buy XP doesn't mean that they will run XP on it. All this shows is that the Microsoft Tax is still in place.
Was hardware sold without any OS left out of the survey, put in the Windows column, or was it placed in the Unix column?
Does any internet survey show a increse in the percentage of Windows servers to Unix ones? This would be more intresting to know. If the Unix/Linux percentage is still increasing, and the Windows is decreasing, it would be another point on the Cost-of-using Microsoft products.
As it is, this survey is only of interest to retailers who sell the hardware, not to anyone who actually have to use it.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
It would be interesting to know how many X86 systems including blade servers and their derivatives were sold in the same period analyzed in this IDC report without an OS. I speculate that there is a large relative percentage of the aforementioned machines sold that run Linux, FreeBSD or some other open source OS. In addition, there is a growing "appliance" server market, most of which run an open source OS as well despite claims to the contrary. The increase in adoption of open source OSs coupled with a dwindling number of commercially supported Unix OSs from companies like Sun and SGI not to mention those company's efforts to open source their OSs seems certain to have a material impact on the relevancy of these results. To me, results like this are a good example of how complex data analysis can be.
AFS is fast and AFS can be secure...but AFS is also a pain in the ass to set up outside of a corporate environment. When I can do yum install afs; chkconfig --level 35 afs on; service afs start and don't have to configure anything else from defaults (or maybe have a two-field GUI application to plug two values into, or something like that), then AFS can replace NFS.
I know that Red Hat is pushing GFS. I don't really care that much what becomes popular; I'm just frusterated that there is not a ubiquitous, fast, secure, easy-to-set-up, *working* network filesystem on all Linux boxes.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I send a letter to the vendor stating in no uncertain terms that I do NOT accept the EULA offered with the software and that I will consider my rights violated, with the Usual Consequences, if I am counted amongst its registered users.
If by "Usual Consequences" you mean "No Consequences At All" then I apologize in advance. But I'm genuinely curious as to what rights of yours they have violated if they add a "1" under the "Windows" column of their summary list despite your denial of the EULA.
By all means, fill me in.
I wonder about two things from the numbers:
It could be that surveys such as this just highlight the higher sunk-cost upfront for a non-Linux solution, rather than actual market share. In terms of market share, I am more interested in newly deployed server capacity than in how many dollars were spent doing it. The dollar amounts are interesting mainly for comparing relative costs for purchasing different platforms.
In terms of this particular data point, if we assume Linux primarily cannibalized UNIX market share, simply adding the numbers puts UNIX $5b ahead of Windows. BUT, suppose we assume moving that server capacity back to UNIX triples the cost (a conservative estimate). In terms of dollars, that puts the UNIX market share at nearly double Windows'. See how worthless the $ numbers can be?
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
My company has purchased about 100 Dell servers over the past year with "no operating system" because Dell only offers Windows or RedHat, and we run Debian. In the Windows world the only way to get your OS is to buy it. In the UNIX world there are many free ways to get it. If Windows just barely won, then I'd say they've probably got at least another 10% to go to make up for all those OS-less server purchases that get Linux or BSD installed on them.
But as a unix shop, we buy servers pretty rarely. Even when we buy big new hardware we can find all manner of uses for our older boxes. And just the number of servers we use is very small relative to our traffic volume. Up until recently we were comfortably pushing about 40Gb/sec out of 4 dual pentium boxes (and won awards for fastest responding retail site at that time). We pulled this off by understanding exactly where bottlenecks are and tuning things accordingly to maximize the performance and lifespan of the hardware.
:)
Is this the same pattern as with Windows servers? I know that some Windows server administrators have the tendancy to buy new hardware whenever things are running less than optimally. There doesn't seem to be much interest in tuning. Maybe things could be optimized, but there's an idea that it's easiest to just buy bigger, faster hardware.
I know that when I worked at Microsoft back in 99, this was certainly the case. Funny story: I remember them officially announcing that we had to switch our webservers (in the bCentral division) to Windows because we had a large number of FreeBSD machines running at about 5% CPU utilization, and they couldn't justify so many servers being underutlized. The proposed solution was to install Windows: if we did, it would use more CPU to do the same work and thus the large number of webservers would be justified. This was around the time I left
I guess I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised if the relative efficiency and the liklihood of performance tuning was part of what's behind this data.
Cheers.
Windows Bumps Unix as Top "Sucking Money from Businesses Run by Insecure CEOs" OS.
Where I work we have a Windows environment for all the desktops and a Unix environment for one specialize app. Last year they replaced the Unix server, replacing that one box cost more than my 3 racks of Windows servers. Hell, the annual maintenance from HP cost more than all my servers.
Unix, not Linux, is very expensive.
Windows Server edged Unix out as the most likely to be wiped off the hard drive and replaced with linux, since most OEM's bundle windows and you don't have a choice.
-Your local master of the obvious
After all, BSDs, HP-UX, Solaris and even *cough* SCO is considered "UNIX." Why is Linux left out of that count? I think that it would be found that there has been a change and that "UNIX" (if Linux were included in that number) has actually grown in server share.
What does this mean? That M$ FUD is working? If that is so, I see a very, very bleak computeing future. Imagine, all you would ever get is IIS errors, and always being told by the admin that the server is going down for the next 5 hours to install patches. And no work files would ever survive for more then 10 hours! I don't want to live in a future like that.
Of course windows gets more billions when it's more expensive! lol.
You have to compare the statistics by installed systems and *nix will outperform everything else.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
When I worked for Sun and we were developing for Solaris 8, 9 and 10 (before Sun got its own Opteron boxes out) I had to buy some servers from Dell, in the UK.
They would not sell a server (6600) without an OS for "piracy reasons." It was cheaper to buy one with Windows than Dead Rat Linux despite the fact I was going to be running neither. I was going to be running Solaris.
Maybe they've changed their policy now?
The best thing to do is to collect the Windows licence certificates and return them and ask for a refund under the terms of the EULA.
In other news, UNIX sales fell sharply while Linux deployments increased by 23% over the last 3 quarters. Linux deployments are often not counted by surveys, because they are freely downloadable and are given away at no cost.
Some get it, but most miss the underlying point...
I see arguments about how MS forces people to buy their server OS (this does NOT happen), or that larger Unix system sales are down and this means nothing because of the Linux growth, and how MS is using this as PR, even though it isn't even their tracker, and about 50 other thoughts ideas and assumptions...
What I don't see is the simple fact. Windows Servers are STILL selling and making Money for MS and are also considered to be a viable Server technology.
So no matter what other opinion you take or view you make out of this, you have to step back and realize Windows Servers are not losing ground and are considered by a lot of 'professionals' to be the right solution for whatever environment they were purchased for, especially if they were replacing high end Unix systems of the past, or even if it is just them expanding the Windows base via demand of the Windows Desktop.
From my personal experience, we observe Windows is once again being trusted in Web hosting environments. Not only for simplicity and features, but with Windows 2003 Server, MS actually delivered a high level of security and stability.
(And I know that is not a popular statement, but is true - go check the security updates, patches, and vulnerabilities for Windows 2003 Server since its release, they are less than OSX, Linux, Solaris, and in some aspects had fewer patches and updates than even good old secure BSD in the same timeframe.)
Windows sales overtook Unix sales by 200 million dollars, and Linux sales grew by 1 billion dollars. This isn't exactly an example of Windows toppling the competition.
As though a dollar value counts as market share when you're talking about fucking free OSs.
This is just an example of BS that can be concocted with statistics.
Dell sells really cheap "servers" - SC430. Thousands of people buy them for cheap desktops. Just check a web site like fatwallet to see threads about buying these.
More interesting question would be how many licenses for Windows Server Edition?
m
[troll] :)
Of course, because it takes five Windows server to do the work of one Unix one.
[/troll]
Big deal. Sales!? This is an absolutely horrid metric by which to measure industry-wide success of any given operating system. We should expect Windows server sales to ALWAYS be higher than UNIX server sales. Everyone knows that windows servers need upgrading and replacing more often. Must be part of their whole "better TCO" argument. "When it breaks, you just throw it out and buy a new one!". UNIX servers are usually put in place for the long haul.
Primary UNIX web server:
www ~ # uptime
12:49:10 up 141 days, 12:31, 4 users, load average: 0.62, 0.93, 1.10
www ~ #
Actual uptime (barring scheduled maintenance) 2.5 years.
Primary Windows Server:
Replaced with a UNIX server because it was constantly hanging and had to be rebooted (unscheduled). Longest uptime recorded was 17 days.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Everybody that paid for Unix got ripped off. The $17.5 are probably for the actual hardware, but how do we know what OS was installed? Must Unix/Linux OS are installed by the operator himself.
My company bought a HP workstation with Windows preinstalled because it was cheaper than the exact same hardware with Linux. Then I slicked the hard drives and installed Linux. I'm sure the same thing happens with servers all the time.
I know I'm being picky here (and mostly off-topic too... damn the torpedoes!), but UNIX is not a mainframe OS. The architectural tradeoffs made in a mainframe OS are starkly different than the "everybody-gets-the-processor" mentality of UNIX.
A mainframe OS is typically highly specialized to the hardware that it runs on. This allows them to get very high utilization of the hardware, and the operating system knows when to "get out of the way" of the application(s).
I guess most people think they're the same... one command prompt looks pretty much the same as any other, right? But the design goals between, say, Solaris and z/OS are on opposite ends of the spectrum in many cases.
--Mid
I have personally purchased two servers from Dell under my companies microsoft select agreement. Both servers had the drives wiped and Linux reinstalled as soon as we received them. Surely those counted as sales of Windows 2003 Server.
So, subtract 12,000 from the microsoft total and add it to the *nix total. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has done this.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time,
Note what I bolded very carefully.
Windows bumped Unix in SALES. Downloads do not count as sales. Whether they (Microsoft) like it or not, Linux, BSD, and (Open)Solaris are still going strong.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
However I would like to say that in most cases as a server Unix is better, there is still one place where it is lacking: usability. Sure a seasoned Unix expert understanding what he is doing and can perform plenty of magic, but a company is not always interested in hiring the most compentent person. In this scenario Windows wins hands down, since while not necessarily the 'best' server it is one that is easy to administer. The GUI tools make a huge difference in managing the system and changing settings. Unix often involves delving down to the terminal and invoking some magic to make things happen - understanding the abstraction often helps.
As tasks become more complex and diverse, providing a simple way of managing and reducing the perceived complexity is important. It is also a great selling point. MacOS X also trys achieving the same thing, but because it is only one company selling both the hardware and the software, I am not sure we will see the same deployment on the server side.
What will sell Unix is a good (as opposed to average) set of integrated tools for administering the complexity. If it is as easy to use as Windows Server 2003, then headway has been made. I know you probably wouldn't want a Windows admin messing with your Unix server, but the reality is, companies probably want just that.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I have two economy cars, and one minivan. The minivan cost more than twice what the economy cars cost. For the first time in history, minivan sales have taken the lead over econony car sales in my household!
(sigh)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
No mention is made regarding possible contributing factors:
I wonder what the real reason this report was published. Maybe there's a minimum daily quota of MS articles to drown out stuff like Linux on the Intel-based Macs or articles on Vista on Linux. Or maybe it's the trouble MS is having with the EC, that they'd like to hide in a cloud of smoke.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This survey just totally ignore these above but valid factors and, instead, focus on a marketing angle that justifies a single OS vendor.
These aren't lies and certainly not damned ones. This one is definitely a statistic, to be taken with a grain of salt.
So much for Linux and the OSS crowd.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Windows is only be considered to be a viable Internet server platform by persons who fall into one (or more) of the below categories.
1. Complete morons/feeble minded persons who assume becuase MS and Bill Gates have a lot of money that they must be better
2. People who dont know anything else, and whom wouldnt be considered 'professionals' except for the MS knowledge they have, and recognize that they would be useless if their MS 'expertise' was no longer relevant
3. Executives who've made the decision to go with MS after being wined and dined by the MS sales team
4. People that think that 'sales' is even *remotely* a valid measurement of the success of an OS. The purpose of software isn't to make money for the company that sells it, the purpose of software is to do what the person installing/deploying it wants it to do.
Sure, you can count units of RISC boxes sold, and you can count Windows licenses, but how much of the installed Linux base is ever counted? After all, the point of Linux is cheap hardware and a useful server OS. It makes more sense to me to buy a lot of cheap, redundant parts at Newegg, and build servers to the specs I need, and have plenty of spares for failure rates. Plus you can build as you go - my little test Linux box is now this monster server because I keep adding stuff to it. (I expect any IT staff who can use Linux can stick a few cards on a motherboard. This is not rocket science :)) Will Newegg make all these comparison numbers worthless?
Microsoft tops UNIX in sales. This doesn't mean that there are more Microsoft servers than UNIX.
It might mean that UNIX systems are much more stable and powerful, and that owners of UNIX systems don't need to buy more systems to support their applications. UNIX already handles it!
/didn't RTFA
It'll last as long as they can fiddle the numbers. Notice that this is the number of Unix servers sold, not the number of websites using Free Software unix-likes or the number of sysadmins who have used both extensively and say they prefer windows. Windows sucks for servers, and will do for the foreseeable future.
A quick look at netcraft will clearly show that Apache (ie, mainly Unix-likes) are more popular than IIS (ie, Windows) for internet servers by a factor of 3 to 1.
Consider all of the Windows boxes that have been knocked over and used as bot zombies...that's ALOT of "servers"...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
... the rather common case of a machine sold with Windows, which immediately had linux installed. In some cases, a dual-boot setup is done, mostly so that you can get support for hardware problems, and the vendor won't support you if you're running linux. But mostly, to get the machine you want, unless it's a high-end machine, it's difficult to buy it with linux installed. So you shrug, accept it with Windows, pop in the linux CD, and 20 minutes later you have the machine you really wanted. I've done this some uncounted number of times.
As far as I could tell, all those machines sold with Windows that are running linux are counted as Windows machines. I know that two of my three linux boxes upstairs are like this. And, since I haven't ever called MS support, Bill Gates lists me as a satisfied customer.
There's also the widespread phomenon of linux spreading via the old, cast-off Windows machines that will no longer run the latest required upgrades. These are often truly "free" linux machines, and they aren't in any sales statistics.
It's pretty easy to publish misleading numbers in this industry.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
No, it wouldn't.
The linux kernel s fresh code, and generally shipped with the GNU utilities. Neither the kernel nor the gnu stuff descends from the code, whereas the origin of the BSD's is a source license to the old code.
While the BSDs aren't counted as Unix by trademark, and it wouldn't really make sense to count them as such in this study, they *are* the actual unix code. Linux is not.
hawk
Interesting point :
.. and the revenue model is moving away from SALES of boxes to service and other revenue.
If we just look at SUN for example, their newish server offerings are relatively cheap, and solaris is pretty much free of charge. The general trend in UNIX servers is that the up front price is decreasing
With an increasing emphasis on service revenues - just looking at the value of SALES of boxes up front has a lot less meaning these days, and fails to describe whats happening in the market.
Microsoft has been trying for years to make this adjustment as well (from up front package sales to a service revenue), but they havent been very successful at all. They only get by from one year to the next by pumping sticker prices for all they are worth (and then some). The profits from this operation are spent desperately on loss-making attempts to move into a service and subscription revenue mode. (games console market, mobile phones, email services, etc)
Times are changing, and Microsoft is struggling to change with them. This article shows one statistic that still makes them look good though.
Another point to consider - when SUN, HP, IBM, etc sell a unix box - all the profits from the sale go to them. When DELL, HP, IBM etc sell a Windows server - only part of the profits of the sale go to Microsoft, the rest stays with the hardware vendors.
Its not looking that good for Microsoft really.
Windows is only be considered to be a viable Internet server platform by persons who fall into one (or more) of the below categories.
/.er sees it as. However sadly the average /.er tends to see Windows as just Win32 or the Win9x OSes they left to go to some *nix variant.
1. Complete morons/feeble minded persons who assume becuase MS and Bill Gates have a lot of money that they must be better
2. People who dont know anything else, and whom wouldnt be considered 'professionals' except for the MS knowledge they have, and recognize that they would be useless if their MS 'expertise' was no longer relevant
3. Executives who've made the decision to go with MS after being wined and dined by the MS sales team
4. People that think that 'sales' is even *remotely* a valid measurement of the success of an OS. The purpose of software isn't to make money for the company that sells it, the purpose of software is to do what the person installing/deploying it wants it to do.
Possibly, but what about the person with an IQ around 180, has studied and taught OS Theory and Engineering for 15 years, worked with NASA and Pentagon on Security, studied researched and taught UI interaction and user behavior with regard to technology, worked with the Microsft NT team in the early 90s, worked with the X11 project as back as 1986, and to this day will protest that Windows NT and even the flawed Win32 subsystem that sits on top of it is the best OS working theories in production on technilogical merit alone.
This person was also a part of and a strong contributor to the *nix community on and off over the years, and has provided common concepts and code in use in almost every *nix or variant in the world.
You see, I am not totally sold on Windows is perfect, but I'm also not sold on Windows is so flawed only a moron would use it.
Especially since I know the person I am describing above, and spending five minutes with them will make you question your own reality of computers and OSes, and yet they see Windows NT as the 'revolution' of OS computing architecture, not the weak bastard that the average
So do I just assume that your generalizations are correct, or do trust people I work with and myself, with what understanding I have of OS design as well?
I tend to go with the smart people on this, and your generalizations come from anger, hate, or ignorance. None of which seem to be solid foundations that fit logically, they only work when you invoke emotion.
Especially since I know the person I am describing above, and spending five minutes with them will make you question your own reality of computers and OSes, and yet they see Windows NT as the 'revolution' of OS computing architecture, not the weak bastard that the average slashbot sees it as.
Another important thing to realise about Slashdot is that denigration and criticism of Microsoft and its' offerings is a very deep seated element of the groupthink, and is engaged in on that basis...and not, I suspect, because that is how the majority here genuinely feel.
It's true that this site used to be a lot more genuinely *nix centric, but such was a long time ago. These days it's a lot more the case of around 90% or so of the readership using Windows, (at least commercially) while still trying to impress the 10% (or so) FSF/Debian bots who occasionally poke their heads out of the woodwork.
Read this site. Read *all* of it, end to end.
MS and a competitive market where quality software can be successful are direct opposites. MS could *not* be successfull in a truly competitive market, and a truly competitive market cannot be truly be had until MS no longer has a monopoly over it. MS is far better at making money than they are at making software.
http://www.msversus.org/book/print/1
Very interesting comments. I know quite a few people who would at least compare favourably to your source, and absolutely none of them would agree with the declaration of NT as a revolution, or even a particularly interesting footnote. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that at least one intelligent and qualified person _does_ believe that.
I remember being frustrated with MacOS (after coming from 8-bit OSes), and being quite excited over buying my first computer and being able to get this NEW thing called Windows 3.0, which would fix all of the mistakes Apple had made when they moved from the ][+ to the Mac. Then I started using it, and discovered just how horrible it was. Eventually I left and went to OS/2 2.1, and then Win95. Architecturally OS/2 was a masterpiece, but Win95 stole enough ideas from everything else in existence that it actually had the best GUI around, when it came out. Pity it was still a buggy shell on top of DOS.
Meanwhile, NT4 was around, and was mostly a server OS by default, since it wouldn't run any actual applications. In all honesty, it wasn't bad--it ran, and it was relatively solid once it was installed and configured.
Win2k was MS's high-water-mark. It was a resource pig at the time, but it was the most stable OS MS has ever released, according not just to myself but to some intelligent Wintel admins I know and respect. It also had some fairly revolutionary features, at least as compared to most OSes (including Unix). Sun's new service manifest model with automatic service restarters isn't a _lot_ different in concept to what MS has been doing for a long time now. As much as I like to bash MS, they have come up with some good refinements to existing ideas.
However, where's the revolution? What made NT revolutionary? I don't see anything--a GUI for managing the OS (which is based on traditional OS concepts) is occasionally helpful, sometimes confusing, and decidedly more problematic to maintain. As near as I can see, that was the biggest architectural change that MS made, and I'm not at all sure it was a good one.
I wouldn't say that anyone who uses WIndows as a server is a moron, but the only problems that I see MS solving _better_ than the competition are:
1) Problems that MS has invented (i.e. the best CIFS server is made by the company that invented the protocol because they didn't want to use NFS).
2) Short-term user happiness and lower initial training costs (which in my experience are offset by the higher ser maintenance costs).
3) Hiding easy but knowledge-intensive tasks behind a nearly knowledge-free interface.
Out of curiosity, what does your OS Theory friend think of Solaris 10?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
...Xenix, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, SunOS, Helios, UNIXWARE(R), OpenServer, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, ArchBSD, Minix, MV/UX, Digital Unix, Tru64, Irix, Coherent, OS X, Ultrix, Dynix, QNX, LynxOS, IDRIS, Delphi, DC/OSx, NonStop-UX, PTX, UNICOS, Reliant, SystemV...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
have nothing to do with my post.