Three Windows to Linux Migrations (and Vice Versa)

daria42 writes "In this extended article, ZDNet Australia goes under the hood of three enterprises that moved their back end servers from Windows to Linux and open source software. Two of the companies ended up eventually going back to Microsoft, with the third one still going strong with Linux."

Comments

Re:OffTopic

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw that too. It's another fine example of the brilliant coding on /.

Re:OffTopic

[gEvil (beta)]

It's because the link was in "the mysterious future." That's what they look like when you're either a subscriber or have the free daypass. However, it looks like there's a bug in the slashcode, cos I've seen them a couple of times now, and I'm not a subscriber nor do I have the daypass...

There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[CastrTroy]

This sounds like a pretty expensive procedure of going to Linux, and then eventually switching back when you find out that it isn't working for you. I think that with the right people, with the right knowledge, that it would be a good change for those involved. Buy you don't have to move everything all at once. Maybe just stop using windows for new things, and then eventually move the old stuff, or not. There's no reason to take down a working server, and try to replace it with something unfamiliar. replace little things, one at a time, and keep what's working for you. If you try Linux mail servers, and you just had a better time with Exchange, then leave exchange working. But if your database servers are performing better with Postgres, then leave that in place. There's no reason why you can't have a mixed environment.

Re:There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[bersl2]

I don't think that three is a sufficiently large sample to reach many conclusions in general.

Re:There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[ElleyKitten]

The problems with Linux for the two companies that switched to Windows wasn't switching headaches - the one company had used Red Hat for three years, and the other one since '99. Their problems were that they wanted features they weren't finding in Linux, but did find in Windows. Your advice for switching is solid, but it's not relevant to the problems brought up in the article.

Re:There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[Anonymous Coward]

We made the decision a couple of years ago to move away from MS to RedHat Enterprise. Everything we needed, at that time, we felt linux offered and for a better price. However, if I had to make the same choice right now, I'd surely go with MS. I don't like this fact but Linux has let us down in several areas, the primary being integration. ALL applications and management functions require a hodge-podge of tools to maintain. Everything linux just "feels" different than everything else linux. The next reason for us moving was to get back to what we are here to do. When management comes to us and says there is a new business need for a certain piece of hardware/software, we have to be able to answer the question, "Can we use this?", with confidence. It's always a crap shoot with linux whether something new will work. Yeah there's probably two people in the whole world who can make everything work, but try tracking them down. Linux keeps us from providing solutions where MS does not. I think we were under the impression that the LAMP stack was much better than windows. However, after checking out a 2003 server, we were used to 2000, that misconception has changed. It's soooooo easy to manage remote users, web pages, authentication, VPN, users, you name it. It is a shame that linux's strengths get hidden behind such a conglomeration of dissimilar interfaces, obscure configurations, and non-integration. I'm sorry for the linux bashing. Really sorry, because I'm still stuck using this when a better solution exists.

Re:There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[hattmoward]

In part, I disagree. In my opinion, the first two companies were examples of what can happen when you try to build *any* environment when your techs don't have enough knowledge to do it right. Windows can have terrible identity management too, if someone doesn't get it set up correctly. Exchange servers can be integrity and uptime nightmares in the wrong hands. Right now, though, you are definitely going to find business applications that aren't available on Linux, and if your techs can't find a way to make it work or find something similar, you are SOL. If it's something you can't do without, well Windows may be the only solution.

Re:There and back again... A Hobbits tale

[egarland]

Their problems were that they wanted features they weren't finding in Linux, but did find in Windows.

But were they really? The rationale seemed fuzzy and nebulous to me, exactly the type of stuff you would come up with if there was no good reason other than "I wanted to".

'"They're gearing everything towards this collaboration platform, and the way these applications are moving towards total integration is extremely attractive to me," says Parsons. "Knowledge needs to be transferred seamlessly and transparently between the organisations[sic]."'

Hmm... someone drank a bit too much of the coolaid. "I like this product because of the features it doesn't have yet."

'"We're starting to see cross-group collaborations on a scale that we've never seen before, with communities of practice across the entire group rather than one office,"'

Thats a pretty nebulous concept that's hard to pin down and show to be true or false. I'm not saying it's false, just that it's the type of thing an executive would say if there was no good reason.

'Users are more comfortable with the environment, while accessibility of information means executives "are feeling much more confident" about continuing to expand Coffey's business in new ways.'

It sounds like this guy is seriously focused on groupware which (at least in his mind) is key to his business. Groupware is one place where Linux is weak so he may have made the right choice. Still, without knowing the details of his situation it's hard to know if he made the right choice or simply chose the path that was easy and simple and shrink wrapped with a nice little powerpoint presentation on how much synergy it would create. It probably didn't hurt that those sales guys hung around to tell all the other executives how much confidence they should have during their next MS sponsored restaurant outing.

As for the other customer, it sounds like they had a seriously poorly architected network that needed an overhaul. Switching to Windows gave him that and consultants to design his network for him. Sounds like he made the right choice but he would also have made the right one if he was in a seriously screwed up Windows based network and had Linux consultants come in and design something that worked well.

Linux isn't right everywhere and Microsoft does make lots of good software products (arguably not counting Windows). Some businesses, especially small ones without good Linux expertise and no/poor consultants to turn to when they need some will find it hard to go that route. It's ok.. Linux has plenty of uses besides your little network, and some day, it will be ready for you and when it is it will make you happy. Until then.. don't let Microsoft sucker you into thinking that day will never come.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what a story: the world's largest business software providers makes good software for business needs. Colour me unsurprised.

What works best

[Billosaur]

So we have a breakdown of 3 companies, 2 switching from Linux to Windows, 1 from Windows to Linux. Is there any great wisdom to be gleaned from this? The only bit I can come up with is that you use what works best for you with the infrastructure you need to support. It's easy to say Linux will work well for everything but that's just not realistic. It's also safe to say that Microsoft sucks universally, yet there are plenty of sites running SQL Server and IIS that seem to be doing ok.

If you're smart, you analyze your needs and then add 50% for growth and ask yourself if the infrastructure and technology you plan to use can handle it. It's simpler than getting caught up in the Microsoft vs. Liunx battle for supremacy.

Re:What works best

[hey!]

Is there any great wisdom to be gleaned from this? The only bit I can come up with is that you use what works best for you with the infrastructure you need to support.

I think it's interesting to contrast the foci of the switchers.

The Linux to Windows switchers were looking for an OS that was an all-around general purpose operating system to support a wide array of day to day internal IT uses. The problem they have is scaling up their Linux support to keep all the endless bits of software they organization needs working together. The "network effect" applies here: there's lots of companies with their needs and (low level of) resources, and those companies by in large use Windows. Therefore vendors in the Windows space address their needs to do a wide variety of things good enough with limited staff expertise.

The Windows to Linux switcher was looking for the best platform to host a single application they were designing. The consumers of the platform were, in effect, the development team, which was small and a higly focused center of expertise. They are looking for maximum performance and stability to support a universe of software they define. Joe Blow in accounting having to put three passwords in to use the VPN is quite low on their priorities, compared to, for example, hitting an unanticipated wall in the performance curve.

In short, the Linux->Windows switchers viewed software as a support function -- back office stuff. The Windows->Linux switcher viewed software as a line function -- outward facing stuff.

Of course a sample of three is nothing. But anecdotally, it's intriguing.

Skill problems

[__aaitqo8496]

TFA exposes the "problem" in both instances that the company reverted back to Microsoft:

Lacking skill set

Under that scenario, any OS switch would fail. You can't blame Linux (or Windows or any other OS) for that problem. Linux should be viewed as Linux, not Another Windows. You need proper IT support.

Some of the problems were simply lack of knowledge. There were complaints of having to claim 3 passwords for VPN access and not utilizing a worldwide-accessible central information store. That's just laziness.

Re:Skill problems

[Reverend528]

I think this quote from the article really supports that theory:

"If something breaks in Linux and you've got the knowledge, you can generally fix it and get it up fairly quickly by yourself."

"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that."

Re:Skill problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely. Any of what was described is workable by Linux. I know, because I've done it. The fact the the heads weren't willing to put the effort into it is their own fault. I would be more than happy to run my business on MS, but the fact is, it is NOT a stable or safe environment. I got so sick of the reboots and viruses and support of so many desktops that I went to RedHat and a central Xserver. I almost put myself out of a job as their are some days that I get NO support calls because everything just works. It's too bad that more companies can't be willing to put forth the effort because, in the long run, it would only make open source, or Linux in general, more robust and ready for an "Install and Work" OS for business.

Re:Skill problems

[JWW]

I don't know what will happen with mods on this, but here goes....

In my experience I've found a striking number of highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people absolutely REFUSE to learn anything about Linux. Their world is all windows and if you try to get them to open up to new ideas they put their hands over their ears and shout "Na, na, na, I'm not listening!!!".

Of course that means that they really aren't the highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people they're making themselves out to be.

Re:Skill problems

[Daengbo]

Right:

For example, remote users struggled to grapple with a virtual private network (VPN) login system that required three different passwords to establish a connection. Furthermore, plans to introduce a customer relationship management (CRM) system floundered after it became clear that integrating CRM with the existing environment was simply going to be too much effort.

Ultimately, it was the failure of a network interface card and a hard drive that taught IT systems manager Ross Forgione just how wide the gap can be between vendor promises and reality. "Restoring and recovering of any messages that may have been deleted took 24 hours-plus," he recalls. "We were assured that there were procedures and processes you could follow to recover down to the individual message, but when it came to reality, it was a lengthy process and an absolute nightmare."

Couldn't LDAP-Kerberos have solved the first problem and a reasonable backup system solved the third. CRM has been a problem on linux, but couldn't something like ERP5 handle it? It just sounds like the skillset wasn't there.

Re:Skill problems

[foxter]

This is exactly what I have here. I have an absolutely incredible boss, who's realistic, smart and in the thick of things. And yet he absolutely refuses to put even a single Linux box anywhere on the network.

Go figure.

Re:Skill problems

[hey!]

Of course that means that they really aren't the highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people they're making themselves out to be.

Depends, doesn't it, on how you present "learn somethign about Linux"?

If by "learn something about Linux" you mean, "Learn how you can replace all your existing infrastructure and retrain all your sysadmins and users", then of course they want you to go away. Their time is too valuable.

Most IT guys I know are intrigued by Linux, are interested in learning more, but they know they aren't going throw everything they've worked on in the last several years. If, on the other hand, you say, "see how you can use X on Linux as a drop-in replacement for Exchange on Windows, thereby improving security, increasing scalability, and saving license and hardware costs", they'd be all ears. The smart ones,anyway.

The bottom line for them is practical. They can live with "bad, but good enough", if they know where the pitfalls are. They're not interested in "very good, but not quite right for you", and a whole new set of umapped pitfalls.

Re:Skill problems

[digitalgiblet]

"Their world is all windows and if you try to get them to open up to new ideas they put their hands over their ears and shout "Na, na, na, I'm not listening!!!"."

If you replace Windows and Linux in the previous sentence with any other competing ideas (or swap them), you will pretty much still have a valid point.

People who have time, energy and money invested in Windows aren't going to want to switch to Linux. People committed to Linux aren't going to want to switch to Windows. Or Mac. Or Amiga for that matter...

You can make the same arguments for religions, metric system vs. English, emacs vs. vi, republican vs. democrat, tastes great vs. less filling, etc, etc, etc.

Most people like the feeling of belonging to a group. Not all, of course, but most. There are many kinds of groups including the "outsiders" who like to hang out together because they don't feel they belong in other groups.

If I identify myself as a member of group A, it is very difficult to truly have an open mind about the beliefs of group B. Sometimes I even begin to believe that the members of group B are intentionally bad. Part of identifying what makes group A distinct is by contrast with group B. Our biology is wired to make binary distinctions about our environment (I eat it vs. it eats me). That makes for quick decisions. Our SOCIAL systems are almost always made up of a VAST number of shades of gray. A truly open minded person realizes that there are good things and bad things about both group A and B, and then wieghs which group meets their needs best, but acknowleges that for some people group B is a better fit.

For some people Linux is better, for others Windows is better. It is all in the definition of "better". If you want a stable, low-cost, open source system, then Linux is "better". If you want a system that runs specific software you need for your buisiness and it only runs on Windows, then Windows is "better".

It is much easier to judge an operating sytem based on your own criteria and then decide that the one that matches those criteria is empirically better. If you are a "technical" person whose criteria are solely technical then you are likely to arrive at a different conclusion from a "business" person whose criteria are solely business based. Neither of you is emperically right or wrong. Balancing and blending the two is the art.

Re:Skill problems

[NutscrapeSucks]

Couldn't LDAP-Kerberos have solved the first problem

That's pretty much the root of the problem right there. You can get a 100 Linux Nerds to point you in a certain direction, but in reality, how many know how to set up LDAP/Kerberos/VPN so that it works?

Re:Skill problems

[Grab]

A central Xserver works fine if your users are all on-site. The moment you need to do X over a VPN to allow people in other sites to do the same work, you might as well shoot yourself in the head now and save your users doing it to you in 6 months time. Or possibly your manager doing it to you at your next appraisal, when he figures out that every task his employees do takes 5 times as long to carry out.

X was a great idea when all desktop machines were chronically underpowered, couldn't do any significant processing, and didn't have enough storage space to accomodate the data anyway. In that case it made sense to keep all the data and processing back at base. The delays inherent in graphics processing were acceptable when the delays in data processing or the physical impossibility of getting data onto the remote machine. These days though, your desktop/laptop will almost certainly have more spare processing power than your process on a server (except for on a few very exotic machines), and there's plenty of storage space to accomodate the data.

X is now the equivalent of the human evolutionary design of having your testicles hanging between your legs, instead of stored somewhere where they can't be easily knocked. The testicle design made sense at the time, bcos no-one had learnt how to kick someone else in the crotch, and aircooling was just about good enough. Then people learnt the bollock-kicking trick, and suddenly guys are in a world of hurt, and it's too late to un-evolve it. Similarly, using X was just good enough at the time, but now it's about as much fun as a size-10 in the nads, and it's too late to get anything else in there that'd work more effectively.

Grab.

Re:Skill problems

[Trelane]

he moment you need to do X over a VPN to allow people in other sites to do the same work, you might as well shoot yourself in the head now and save your users doing it to you in 6 months time.

or...

Use NX or FreeNX as your X.

the Xorg and other x server devs are aware of the problem, and they're working towards solving it.

Re:Skill problems

[nasch]

Exactly! Either the companies thought they knew how to do all this stuff and they were wrong, or they knew they didn't know how to do it and used Linux anyway. Either way it was a mistake. I got the impression that these companies took a bunch of Windows admins and threw them onto Linux without any training. Why would anybody expect that to work?

Re:Skill problems

[squiggleslash]

Best. Analogy. Ever!

Re:Skill problems

[NutscrapeSucks]

> I got the impression that these companies took a bunch of Windows admins and threw them onto Linux without any training.

Acutally, I thought it was pretty clear that the "Open Source Guys" came back with the 3 password VPN thing and thought it was hunky-dory.

Re:Skill problems

[JWW]

You're right about these sentiments exactly, there are a small number of Linux people who know nothing about windows, but most have to have at least working knowledge about the windows OS.

What I was basically talking about was the refusal to learn anything new so that they can make informed decisions. I guess I always lean towards trying to learn as much as I can about a lot of things instead of learning as much as I can about one thing.

Also, the knowledge of different systems and the differences between them also helps increase understanding because it helps you see how multiple approaches to the same problem each can have their strong and weak points.

On another note, I also believe this beyond just operating systems. The KDE vs. Gnome battles on /. just make me roll my eyes. Learning them both is not that hard, railing against one or the other is mostly useless. I try to apply the same philosophy to that issue that I am espousing for operating systems.

Re:Skill problems

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that."

I worked for a company that started with Windows 2000 and moved to Linux. Before Linux, we only had a part-time sysadmin. By part time, I mean he had other tasks to handle and if the computers did break, he'd go work on them. Everybody there was familiar with Windows so they did a lot of their own repairs. (It's worth noting that Windows actually played quite nicely with everybody. No BSODs, crashes, workstation uptimes > 2 weeks, server uptimes > 6 months (stupid power failures)... Etc.) We switched to Linux because we had to. (Long story, but it wasn't some itch to save money or anything like that. It was related to the work.) When we switched to Linux, well only one person there really had the knowledge to maintain it, and she was busy with her job. So we had to hire a Linux admin to keep it up. Wow.. the transition was painful. The engineers all had experience with Unix, but we still had so many stupid little problems from setting up the networks to just plain getting printing going. The only way we were really able to pull it off was to use VM-Ware with a boot into 2K. Argh. I imagine by now that they're not using Win2K + VM-Ware anymore, but it's hard to say. There's so much that goes on with software development that I just cannot imagine it.

In that particular case, moving to Linux proved costly, mainly because the Windows licenses were already paid for (not that that was a huge expense to begin with) and everybody knew it well enough to maintain it. I imagine in the long run it paid off, but it's hard to say because the move to Linux wasn't optional. I doubt they'd be using Linux today if the technology didn't require a shift.

In any event, I'm not bashing Linux here, just providing anecdotal evidence that suggests that the quote you posted was correct. This is why I grit my teeth over TCO arguments for either side. The reality is somewhere in the middle.

Re:Skill problems

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most IT guys I know are intrigued by Linux"

That means you don't know IT guys at all.

IT guys have as part of their must-have, deep knowledge of Unix just as a clerk must-have's double entry ledger (hey, but [my pet home package] does nice without it!). After all, noone can say a more than 30-year-old based technology is news for anyone (the news is that some "clerks" -some sysadmins, try to convince you that they are "real clercks" -sysadmins, even if they don't know what "double entry" -unix, means).

"The bottom line for them is practical."

Were it be "practicality" noone sane would depend their IT infrastructure to "mouse drones" instead of properly trained (thus unix-savvy) staff.

Re:Skill problems

[gnud]

BadAnalogyGuy just got some competition :)

Re:Skill problems

[Blakey Rat]

Uh, whoa, think about this.

If you can do with Windows the same things you can do with Linux, but it requires less specialized knowledge, doesn't that make Windows better?

Of course the Linux community will say no, because the vast majority of the Linux community doesn't believe in software usability. God forbid you suggest that admining a server should be easy. Why, if it was easy, ANYONE could do it! Then how would we charge insane consulting fees? The High Priesthood of Technology must stand!

Ok, sorry for the sarcasm, but still. Usability is important. If Linux were as easy to use as Windows, if those features that Linux supports were as visible to the admins as they were in Windows, I'm sure all three of those businesses would still be using Linux right now.

Re:Skill problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is a known quantity cash cow. Entrenched, old, it's just there... And It's broken just enough (on purpose, called planned obsolesence) to "require" legions of fixit men. Legions, pods, flocks, coveys, gangs, herds... If something weird comes up and they can't fix it, they can also shrug their shoulders and say " a million other windows admins probably can't fix this either,uhh, we checked, that's the ticket, we *checked around* and it is effecting a lot of other companies too. We need to talk to MS about it, must be on their end somehow..next patch should fixc it... and stuff".

    This is why you most likely won't see too many local whitebox fixit shops recommending anything but their MS fixit services and to stay the course with windows, It's a guaranteed $50-70 an hour to clean malwares out every month or two months. FATCITY! Easy money! Most of those places would go completely out of business if the bulk of their customers didn't run windows. No way most of them could stay in business just knocking together clones for sale. they need the "broken windows" business model, the perpetual "never quite works and never really will" model.

Re:Skill problems

[lazybeam]

Three passwords:

Get into your computer
Get onto your ISP (usually stored within your computer)
Get into the VPN (but should be like a encryption key?)

Can't really get fewer than that now can we? :)

Re:Skill problems

[Bert64]

Only it's not easy...
It may be easy to get it "barely working"... but is that really the ideal situation? Without competent staff running them, windows machines deteriorate and collapse pretty quickly, as they become bogged down in crap and infected with malware.
Unix machines if setup competently to start with, will just remain running but they too might benefit from occasional maintenence.

Until systems are easily useable in a safe secure and stable manner, neither situation is suitable for unskilled staff. OSX gets closest in this regard.

Re:Skill problems

[Grab]

The point is that I don't believe it's a solvable issue.

On a typical trans-Atlantic link on a typical corporate app (disclaimer: I do work for Ford, and I reckon their network setup is pretty much link everyone else's), an X app takes around 10 seconds between window shell appearing and full redraw of all widgets inside it. This simply ain't acceptable. The link is fast to transmit bulk data once the transmission is started (typical FTP speed is 30KB/s), but all the handshaking inherent in X means sending a few bytes one way, then a few bytes back, then a few bytes again, and the extra trans-Atlantic delay on these exchanges are what kills you.

The problem is that this is a feature of the architecture, caused by where the dividing line between "server" and "terminal" is placed. The only fixes are for X to exchange less data, or for the link to get faster. With significant work from X people, and significant advances in the network infrastructure, we might just get an acceptable performance for basic desktop apps.

Yippee - basic desktop apps that work at an acceptable speed on anyone's PC. But didn't Windows 3.1 do that 15 years ago? So why not fuck X off your machine, install Windows, give people Windows versions of the software to install, and give them all access to the data? Or if your company is all using Linux on their desktops (which is rare), then they can use X locally on their machine, which obviously is a damn sight faster bcos there's no trans-Atlantic delays. Now they're only limited speed-wise by how fast they can access the raw data, which in 99.99999% of cases requires less data transmission than to draw an entire screen, and those transmissions can be done using efficient database transactions which take much less interchange between desktop and server.

My point is that today, drawing your client-server dividing line at the display level is almost never a good decision. In fact it's so rare that we can isolate it to one specific case - the use of high-performance clusters. X (or NX) will *always* deliver less performance graphically, and due to the speed of desktops these days will *always* deliver less processing performance unless your server is using something really serious *and* you have exclusive use of that machine/cluster. In other words, the use of X between remote locations is only justifiable under some extremely rare conditions, and under any other conditions any proposal to use it should be refused by anyone who knows their stuff. It really is that simple.

Grab.

Re:Skill problems

[Trelane]

The point is that I don't believe it's a solvable issue.

My point was that you're wrong. My new point is that there are a number of ways to solve the long-latency-time issue, aside from going fat-client whole hog.

Re:Feeling homesick?

[AKAImBatman]

Read The Fine Article more carefully. The businesses they're talking about didn't use Microsoft Windows. They went directly to Linux and have been running it for a long while. Coffey, for example, had standardized on Mandr[ake|iva] back in 1999. They came to the eventual conclusion that Linux wasn't meeting their needs, and so they went shopping. They (unsurprisingly, yet frustratingly) settled on Microsoft software.

Using Linux correctly?

[Rekolitus]

"Previously, all the e-mails were effectively stored on the desktops and there was no central location of the data,"

Perhaps it's just me, but it seems like these companies weren't applying Linux quite the intended way. Linux isn't a magic plaster you can throw over your IT problems, and frankly, I'm sure it does need a little more maintenance than Windows, but it seems like the people that set these systems up didn't put any thought into their infrastructure.

Storing emails on the desktop isn't a problem that Linux creates. Windows seems more akin to something that says "This is the best way to store emails", whereas Linux is more like "Where do you want to store emails? It's up to you. I can't give you any advice." I'm sure these company's Linux-based experiences would have been much better if they did a bit more planning into the structure of the services in the first place.

Re:Using Linux correctly?

[Chandon Seldon]

Linux should need less maintnence, but it may well need more setup time.

Re:Using Linux correctly?

[marcosdumay]

On servers, both are true from my experience too. But there is a problem with this argument, Microsoft redefined the meaning of "maintence" and "set up". With Windows, "set up" is something you'll surely do every few years, and may do some times between when there is an "emergency". With Linux, all that are "maintance". Some Linux admins count even changing the functions of the servers as "maintance".

Re:Using Linux correctly?

[kimvette]

Agreed. Setting up the shell scripts can be painful at first, you might end up cursing at crond because it's not obeying crontab for some reason (problems such as: "oh wait, which crond variant do I have installed? Oh Vixie cron. THAT's right, that job needs a username to run under. D'oh!"), but once everything is set up you pretty much don't need to think about it. I don't know WHY the parent of your post was modded insightful.

With Linux apps you don't need to resort to an insecure hack like having to install the scripting host and use to automate Exchange maintenance (anyone who suggests the scripting host as an automation solution on a production server is an IDIOT. Period.), you can have crontab email you the output of your maintenance scripts, and you KNOW the scripts will do what they're designed to do.

It isn't hard to migrate to Linux - the hardest parts are:

1. Making the time to RTFM a little bit about bash
2. Setting up Samba or NFS.

Email servers do take a little longer to set up on Linux, but they're well worth it. All the commercial spam and antivirus filters for Exchange seem to suck and they're WAY overpriced (plan on doubling your per-seat licensing costs), and the open source ones (ASSP, Spamassassin for Exchange) are slightly better but the way they have to run is a bit of a hack.

Web servers: if you want a good, functional and secure web server, LAMP is far faster to configure, and migrating to another server is a VERY painless exercise. Ditto for DNS on Linux. Ditto for a MySQL or PostgreSQL server. If you upgrade both a SQL Server and MySQL server side by side, you'll have a MySQL server upgrade (from one machine to a brand-new machine) completed and RUNNING while you're still downloading the Windows updates.

I've been using Samba (for both Windows-> Linux and Linux-> Linux, I didn't want to run multiple network share protocols) but now that I've found a free Windows NFS client that looks like it might be reliable, we will probably be switching to NFS.

The up-front purchase cost of Linux app servers in general is extremely low - most of the software is free.

I'd estimate the setup cost is about the same (it's all just time), or 50% longer if you have a GOOD Windows admin (note: paper MCSEs need not apply) willing to RTFM and learn something new.

Maintenance costs on Linux: Negligible if initially set up correctly (e.g., proper scripts configured in your crontab, etc.)

Downtime/Uptime: Near-zero downtime on Linux, even including Microsoft's definition of downtime. No need to redefine terms to exclude "scheduled maintenance windows" from the downtime calculation.

Re:Using Linux correctly?

[Isaac-Lew]

Ever heard of kickstart? All you have to do is configure *one* system the way you want it, then use the kickstart file to install the other systems (you can even it in conjunction with PXE boot). I'm sure other distributions have an equivalent system available.

David Braue

[dajobi]

Anyone know anything about the author of this story? That first story, the one about Austereo, looked kinda schilly to me, especially comparing what the author wrote to the quotes from the interviewee. Compare:

After three years with Linux, however, Austereo began reconsidering its choice as continued growth in the company led to increasing complexity within its IT strategy -- exposing the limitations of the Linux-based environment in some very painful ways.

This time around, things are working much better, with a full range of Microsoft server applications providing a deeply integrated, highly effective IT infrastructure that has significantly improved productivity and transformed information management within the company.

Working with Microsoft consultants, he and his team sat down to map out their future infrastructure and found that their requirements could be easily met using an integrated suite of applications built on top of Windows Server 2003.

After thorough discussions, Austereo committed to a move away from Linux onto an architecture combining Microsoft SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and SQL Server as well as Office 2003 and BlackBerry-related add-ons like the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. It was a hard decision, but even Forgione concedes he was impressed when comparing the company's existing and potential computing environments.

To:

"Importing our network environment and applications onto a new platform required some fairly specific skills, and those skills were not abundant within the group. As the business started to grow and we realised we needed to provide additional services to help people accomplish their day-to-day tasks, it became a very obvious and glaring issue."

"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that, and it was hard finding people who understood that [open source] isn't just about playing with these tools, but delivering something."

Braue's version: Linux wasn't good enough, a Microsoft "solution" was required.

Forgione's version: The IT staff didn't know how to use Linux. For some reason we didn't think hiring competent staff would be a good idea.

What do you think?

Re:David Braue

[romrunning]

"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that, and it was hard finding people who understood that [open source] isn't just about playing with these tools, but delivering something. The moment we switched to Microsoft, the field opened up." I've seen this happen before when sometimes people are led to believe that OSS is the panacea for all their ills. However, you need people with a wide breadth of knowledge of different OSS applications in order to fulfill expectations. Then they need to have a good track record of actually implementing solutions versus theorizing about them, especially if they will be a "new hire." Many times it simply is difficult to find a Linux person with that wide range of exposure and commensurate experience in delivering solutions; often it is easier to find someone with the same broad range but in Windows apps (even w/consultants). Can you blame them for going with the easier path, especially if it would save them time (which means $)?

Re:David Braue

[Scarblac]

I think a real practical problem for Linux is that competent staff for it is really hard to find in sufficient numbers.

Re:David Braue

[NineNine]

Need to work on that reading comprehension thing a bit... You suggest that the company should hire some expertise, but the last line of the quote you used said explicitly that finding competent Linux expertise was difficult. That's a very valid point that you conveniently ignored.

Re:David Braue

[RogerWilco]

Working with Microsoft consultants

That's a significant part of the 'solution', they seem to say that they didn't have the knowledge inhouse to design an infrastructure that met their increasing demands, and they had 'MS consultants' to turn to for a solution.
I think there might just be to few 'Linux Consultants' that are capable of providing this kind of service, even if the tools might be out there. Pitching them to management in the right way is a skill in itself.

Re:David Braue

[dajobi]

I think a real practical problem for Linux is that competent staff for it is really hard to find in sufficient numbers.

Need to work on that reading comprehension thing a bit... You suggest that the company should hire some expertise, but the last line of the quote you used said explicitly that finding competent Linux expertise was difficult. That's a very valid point that you conveniently ignored.

I have one word for you gentlemen: training.

Re:David Braue

[marcosdumay]

Some things you simply can't train. The people have to decide to learn for themsemves.

Re:David Braue

[rbochan]

...looked kinda schilly to me...

Schilling thinly veiled as news from ZDnet?

I am shocked... SHOCKED I tell you!

Re:David Braue

[NutscrapeSucks]

The impression I got is that it's ease to find Linux people that will recommend stuff because it's "Open Source, therefore Good", but it's hard to find Linux people that are actually objective about solutions and know what works and what doesn't

You see this attitude on Slashdot frequently where second-rate software is pushed just because it conforms to someone's ideological agenda.

Re:David Braue

[Anonymous Coward]

looked kinda schilly to me

Yesh, sheemed mighty schilly to me also!

Re:David Braue

[swv3752]

The way I read it is that the Linux people they found would not rush something out the door. You typical Linux admin will want to go thorugh a rigourous testing phase and write up some scripts to automate all the regular process, while a Windows admin will slap something together and shout "It boots so it works". Managers are often pennywise and pound foolish so wil go after the Windows option.

Additionally, they probably had unrealistic expectations of expertise. Most Linux admins would be willing to learn on the job, but you need to allow a bit of time to learn. Of course, thier current admins could have RTFM to learn on the job, but...

Re:David Braue

[djchristensen]

Working with Microsoft consultants

I have to wonder, how much were they willing to spend on Linux consultants (which, in fact, do exist-- http://www.novell.com/ http://www.enterux.com/ http://www.redhat.com/services/consulting/ --just to name a few big ones)? It seems like there is a reluctance to spend any money on Linux. Heck, it's free software, right? Too many companies seem to look to Linux as a way to reduce costs by not spending money for the software or expertise to make it run. Too few seem to look at the longer term savings brought about by increased flexibility and better control.

Maybe if they spent the same amount on Linux consultants to show them how to get what they wanted (and maybe to help them figure out what they needed) as they spent on MS cosultants, their experience would have been a little different.

Re:David Braue

[NineNine]

The way I read it is that the Linux people they found would not rush something out the door. You typical Linux admin will want to go thorugh a rigourous testing phase and write up some scripts to automate all the regular process, while a Windows admin will slap something together and shout "It boots so it works". Managers are often pennywise and pound foolish so wil go after the Windows option.

Exactly. They want someone who will get the job done, which more often than not (6 years of experience here), is to rush something out the door. If that's the job, then that's what you do, regardless of whatever your ivory tower ideals are about "proper" software development.

Re:David Braue

[swv3752]

And everytime you rush something out the door, you have huge problems later on. Ever hear of a stitch in time saves nine? Rush something and you will forever be fixing it.

Re:David Braue

[NineNine]

You're right. That doesn't have any bearing on your job if you're hired as a programmer and asked to rush something out the door. That's *exactly* the attitude that the guy quoted in the article is talking about.

Switching, one program at a time...

[babbling]

I agree. Most free software can also be run just fine on Windows, so it would be a good idea for any organisation switching to slowly replace each server with free software before migrating to Linux. Once everything is running free software on top of Windows, switching to Linux should be fairly painless.

Re:Switching, one program at a time...

[suitepotato]

I agree. Most free software can also be run just fine on Windows, so it would be a good idea for any organisation switching to slowly replace each server with free software before migrating to Linux. Once everything is running free software on top of Windows, switching to Linux should be fairly painless.

Not likely. Most Windows administrators don't know Vi, grub, parted, etc. from Adam. There's a good steep learning curve. The ideas of partitions, databases, etc. are the same, but the implementations totally different as well as the tools to make them happen.

No amount of open source software on a Windows server is going to be used to do serious blood and guts administration compared to what comes preloaded, and all of it is GUI based. A good barometer is if a Windows admin finds CACLS incomprehenisble and can only use the GUI tools, he/she likely won't be able to make sense of chmod either.

Remember, Windows is a very different architecture from *nix. Open source apps ported to it are often very different in very meaningful ways due to that. Skills on one side are not necessarily or even very likely easily applicable to the other.

Re:Switching, one program at a time...

[clydemaxwell]

It took me two and a half months, using Windows knowledge, to be able to do all the same things in linux. Maybe that's steep, but it was all in my spare time on extra machines at home.
my experience has been that knowing the concepts and being willing to learn are all it takes.

It was about the applications not the OS

[LWATCDR]

For one company it was all about Exchange and Sharepoint. Which are two weaknesses with Linux right now.
Thunderbird is a great email client as is KMail. I use Thunderbird as my email client. What it lacks is the intergration of calendering that Outlook plus exchange offers.
You can talk all you want about how a Calendar should be a stand alone program but Outlook as made the intergration of of the two very useful and in some cases mandatory.
I have looked and looked for a good open source alternative and couldn't find one that was currently complete and worked for both Windows and Linux.
Sharepoint also doesn't have a good open source alternative.
Not every company needs these programs but it seems like a good number do.
Now the other company that complained about needing three passwords for it's vpn? Well they sound like they needed someone that knew how to setup LDAP.

Here would be a great project of an Ubuntu like disto. A small business server that included LDAP for a single sign on, Samba, a Sharepoint like portal, a CRM like Sugar or Tiger, optional VPN, and mail server with calendaring integrated right from the start.
I want one.

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

You can talk all you want about how a Calendar should be a stand alone program but Outlook as made the intergration of of the two very useful and in some cases mandatory. I have looked and looked for a good open source alternative and couldn't find one that was currently complete and worked for both Windows and Linux.

Have you looked at Evolution (Novell)? I haven't used it myself in many years, and when I did I was at a place (academia) that didn't use (or had much need for) calendaring, but by the look of things it should be there. If you have any insights as to why it isn't (if indeed it isn't), I'd appreciate to learn about them.

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[nietsch]

and mail server with calendaring integrated right from the start.
I want one.

the rest of your comment is somewhat coherent, but with this bit your true colors are shining through. Mail servers handle mail, period. Exchange may handle/maul mail (relaying for the world + his dog) but it's addition of a calendering feature does not mean that proper mailserver should have one.
That does not fit the unix way: one program does one thing, and makes sure it is very good at it.

Oh, and outlook does not fid your criteria too: it does not run both on windows and linux (save some wine tricks)...

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[MrCopilot]

You can talk all you want about how a Calendar should be a stand alone program but Outlook as made the intergration of of the two very useful and in some cases mandatory.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning /index.html
FTS: Lightning is a calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird. It offers calendaring features directly in the Thunderbird User Interface. Further integration features, such as e-mail invites or addressbook integration are planned for future releases.

It is easily on its way. Don't give up FOSS needs your input and suggestions. Go back to LookOOUT! is not helpful advice. Google Calendar/Gmail is a better Answer.

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[LWATCDR]

"Oh, and outlook does not fit your criteria too: it does not run both on windows and linux (save some wine tricks)..."
My office has dropped outlook except for some of the clerical staff and the owners :(. You can only do what you can do after all.
I could have said must run under Windows as a requirement. For the most part running under Linux is a given for OSS programs.
As far as the actual structure of the calendaring system I really don't care if it is structurally one program or two. What I do care about is seamless integration. A calendar often needs to use mail services to send invitations and such.
What way to many people don't get is that for most companies software is just a tool. They don't care if it works the Unix way or the Windows way! They want it to work, not take constant fiddling, and to keep working.
My office doesn't have Exchange running, it does use Linux, Samba, Apache, Bind, Perl, PHP, Qmail, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, NetBeans, and Eclipse.org. We are looking at going to Asterix for our phone system and SugarCRM for our CRM package. We are BIG fans of OOS. I am simply explaining what business needs OSS is not currently meeting.

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[LWATCDR]

We have not given up on OSS at all. In fact we are currently testing Asterisk to see if it will be our next phone system. We use OSS for many parts of our company. I do know about Lightning What I have not seen is a good server back end for it. You also pointed out that it is currently lacking e-mail invites and adderssbook integration. Those are two big things for some companies.
I doubt that Outlook will return in force to my company or exchange. I would like some of the functions that they do offer right now but running on our Linux servers.
I would also like to see integration with Bluetooth so that contacts, appointments, and task-lists would sync with my Samsung A900, my wife's A940, a couple of users Treos, and at least one users Razor. I might see if I can write that part myself as an extension to Thunderbird/Lightning.
The key to all of this is that IT JUST HAS TO WORK!

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[LWATCDR]

Evolution is a good program but last time I checked it only ran on Linux. I am also not sure but the client is only part of the solution. The rest of the solution is the server side. Email is easy. Qmail or Sendmail will do that just fine. The hard part is the Calender sharing.

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[TheRealSlimShady]

Mail servers handle mail, period. Exchange may handle/maul mail (relaying for the world + his dog) but it's addition of a calendering feature does not mean that proper mailserver should have one

Depends on whether you class Exchange as a "mail server", or whether it's a "workflow server". Whether or not you agree with it, having the calendar and mail client integrated brings a lot of benefit, not least of which is the fact that the transport for sending calendar invites (mail) and the method for processing those invites are integrated. Times have changed a bit since all mail servers did was handle mail (at least in the corporate world).

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[cortana]

What servers does Lightning use on the backend? IF your organisation is small then you could get away with subscribing to and publishing iCalendar files to a Webdav share -- in which case all you need is Apache. If you want something to scale a little more, you would want to use CalDAV (think HTTP + special verbs for managing calendars).

There are several CalDAV servers available, I don't know how which ones are good and which are bad however. See this article for some pointers to server software.

The other alternative is to ditch Web/CalDAV entirely and go with something proprietry like Hula (which might actually use CalDAV these days, I haven't checked) or Novel Groupwise or something like that. Also there are web based calendaring systems like Scooby and phpCalendar (most of which make their calendars available over WebDAV/CalDAV anyway, so you could choose when you want to use the web frontend or use a desktop application).

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[richlv]

i might agree on sharepoint (though there are cases when svn or some other data synchronisation solution would be sufficient), but you mentioned kmail.
as far as i know, kolab server + kmail supposedly provides pretty decent calendaring solution.

then you can go in different direction and functionality with openxchange, evolution etcetc.

somebody suggested lightning - and i am eagerly looking forward to what will become of it, but it really is in very early alpha stage right now (i have tried a couple of recent builds).

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[LWATCDR]

Kolab and kmail are as far as I know Linux only solutions. We are currently stuck using Windows for at least some desktops. What a lot of people don't seem to get is that the OS is going to be the last thing you change on an desktop. If a company can get all Linux versions of all their software that they are currently running only then will they move to Linux. That is why OSS that runs on both Linux and Windows is key to moving people off of Windows.

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[richlv]

the OS is going to be the last thing you change on an desktop

indeed, because even though gradual migration will take longer time and resources, it allows sloppier planning, fsckups are less serious and human factor (resistance mostly) is smaller.

Kolab and kmail are as far as I know Linux only solutions. We are currently stuck using Windows for at least some desktops.

kmail might run on windows with qt/kde 4, but that's a weak consolation :)
there are connectors for outlook-to-kolab (http://www.kolab.org/kolab-plugins.html), but migrating from outlook to kmail together with operating system might be slightly harder than separating these steps (as both can not be used on a single account simultaneously).

kmail also supposedly supports openxchange, which in turn has a powerful web interface which could be used as an intermediate version (though that might not work for roaming clients who are often disconnected).

then there's zimbra, which has even more powerful web interface in some aspects, but some parts that are crucial for enterprise are not opensource. supposedly supports outlook and thunderbird/sunbird duo, but nothing on kmail...

i'm really waiting for lightning that could be paired with a fully opensource powerful server that had almost identical gui to "fat" client...

Re:It was about the applications not the OS

[BenjyD]

Evolution is still fairly buggy, even compared to Outlook. I found it always used to hang if the network connection went down, as well.

Easy migration tips.

[Kadin2048]

Obviously they missed step 1 in the Windows-to-Linux migration strategy. Go through the resumés of everyone in IT, and fire anyone who's top qualification involved the letters "M," "C," "S," and "E."

And hire the next applicant in the door who only wants to know if free Mountain Dew is a company benefit and has a beard.

No wonder they failed; they forgot the basics.

Re:Easy migration tips.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously they missed step 1 in the Windows-to-Linux migration strategy. Go through the resumés of everyone in IT, and fire anyone who's top qualification involved the letters "M," "C," "S," and "E."

"Proficiency in EMaCS"?

Why does it have to be either/or?

[denverradiosucks]

I hate Microsoft as much as the next slashdotter, but being an IT manager, I wouldn't want the headache of using one OS.

Linux has its advantages. I was able to scale an old Windows 2000 server, Windows NT Server, and a useless company proxy server into a single, consolidated Gentoo System. Does that mean I want to switch everything else, including our accounting databases over to Linux? I couldn't handle the headache. Microsoft's AD is easy to use, we have 2 2003 DC's, including one Terminal server. There is no way I would use something line Wine to get Great Plains working with any sort of consistency. They work reliably as they are now, upgrading to service pack 1 was easy, and managing user accounts is simple (not saying account management in linux isn't).

To the company's that switched from one OS to another, mixed environments are easier, at least for me. Each OS plays an important role, and has advantages/disadvantages. Sure, you had to pay $1,000's to buy Windows software, but you would probably spend that much hiring Linux guys to come in and support your system because there isn't enough expertise to handle these systems. It's a two way street I have found.

Any sort of penetration into

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[denverradiosucks]

I submitted before finishing my comments. Any sort of penetration into the Windows world through Linux is a great step in the right direction. It's just not ready to replace windows on all levels yet.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[dhasenan]

You use Gentoo in a production environment? Urgh. At least you now have two spare computers for cross-compilation.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[ezavada]

I hate Microsoft as much as the next slashdotter, but being an IT manager, I wouldn't want the headache of using one OS.

You are a rare and valuable IT manager. Most IT managers seem to argue the opposite -- they want a monoculture so they only have to learn and manage one thing.

I'd rather work with an IT manager like you any day.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[nagora]

You use Gentoo in a production environment?

Gentoo is great in a production environment: it's stable (unless you ask for non-stable branches) and very, very easy to maintain as well as very fast with security patches.

The downside is that it can be conservative in what it judges to be the "stable release" of packages, so you can trail behind the cutting edge sometimes if you absolutely refuse to have "testing" versions of some packages. But that's a reasonably good thing in a production environment.

TWW

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[C_Kode]

I've been a Linux admin for several years. I just started a new job a few months back and they have several Gentoo boxes. When these boxes are replaced/rebuilt or otherwise they will not get Gentoo again. Don't get me wrong. I am a Gentoo fan, but it has no place in my enterprise environment. I needed to add some network troubleshooting software to a box and it took 50 minutes to negociate dependancies, download, and compile the software. When time if money and it is in an enterprise environment! Waiting 50 minutes to install a couple of small applications is unacceptable! You want a stable Linux distribution? There are a myriad of them. You want one that is stable and doesn't take forever to get setup. Remove Gentoo from that list.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Gentoo is great in a production environment"

It is not.

"it's stable"

It is not. It is fluent per definition (it is defined as a "rolling distribution").

"very, very easy to maintain"

It is not. No system whose behaviour can change from day to day is easy to maintain.

"as well as very fast with security patches."

It is not in any sense. Gentoo has no security patches AT ALL. What's more: it COMMITS not to have (as they don't want patches added to packages -except those for proper Gentoo compatability, per policy).

"The downside is that it can be conservative in what it judges to be the "stable release" of packages, so you can trail behind the cutting edge"

You show yourself. It can't be at the same time "stable" and "cutting edge", no sir. Not from the "bugfreeness" point of view, not from the "stable behaviour" one. Gentoo, even the stable branch, lacks *hard* in both aspects.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[nagora]

It is not. It is fluent per definition (it is defined as a "rolling distribution").

By who and what, if anything, does that buzzword mean?

It is not in any sense. Gentoo has no security patches AT ALL.

I don't know which distro you are thinking of, but it isn't Gentoo.

No system whose behaviour can change from day to day is easy to maintain.

Gentoo changes when you ask it to; if it's changing every day it's because you are changing it every day. Normally, I chanage it after previewing what is new and looking at the list of security fixes.

I think that's enough time wasted on an AC who knows nothing.

TWW

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[nagora]

I needed to add some network troubleshooting software to a box and it took 50 minutes to negociate dependancies, download, and compile the software.

What was the software?

TWW

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[Bert64]

If you want to install software quickly, then gentoo is an unsuitable distribution, although you could have used binary packages with it anyway.
Debian is a better choice in situations like you describe.

I use a large number of gentoo machines for production purposes (the flexibility of use flags is great) i don't just go installing new apps on a whim, indeed doing so has no place in an enterprise environment. If i want to install any new apps on a server, they have to be thoroughly tested on test systems first (we take a disk image of the server, and test the new app on there)... Only if it works correctly on the test system without interfering with other tasks, do we install it on the actual system.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[C_Kode]

netcat, iptraf, and lsof. Which I do remove them after the job I set out to do completes. Sysstat utilities took the longest to install, and it's IMHO that systat is a godsent and I shouldn't have to wait over an hour to have it installed. My RHEL servers install faster than that.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[nagora]

Sysstat utilities took the longest to install,

That's really strange; sysstat took a grand total of 22 seconds to install for me, including the download, on a 2.26GHz Celeron. Perhaps your portage directory had been damaged in some way?

TWW

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[Anonymous Coward]

"[Gentoo] is defined as a "rolling distribution".
By who and what, if anything, does that buzzword mean?"

A rolling distribution is one that never "freezes" in time as you will probably learn just looking for the term on Google. The term was coined *specifically* for Gentoo, while others, like Arch have taken into it too.

"It is not in any sense. Gentoo has no security patches AT ALL.
I don't know which distro you are thinking of, but it isn't Gentoo."

If you think that a security ANNOUNCEMENT is the same thing as a security PATCH, you are beyond salvation.

"Gentoo changes when you ask it to; if it's changing every day it's because you are changing it every day. Normally, I chanage it after previewing what is new and looking at the list of security fixes."

Oh, great news! No: Gentoo doesn't change when I ask for it. As soon as there's a security thread, dealing with it (at least on public boxes) is a MUST, not a thing I can opinate at. And when this happens (maybe not every day, but yes twice a week at least) I *have* to close the security gap. And with Gentoo, that means upgrading the app. And that means the box changes its behaviour, most of the time on unexpected ways. Yes: I do support Gentoo boxes; yes I do read the security announcements; yes I do read the changelog. And still, collateral effects arise (like some web app repently dumping warnings on the browser after a -suppousedly, minor PHP upgrade; or the fax-modem failing to work after a -again suppousedly, minor getty upgrade). The fact that the given apps and apps versions mixture on my specific box is probably unique in the world doesn't help about advancing undesirable side effects when upgrading, either.

"think that's enough time wasted on an AC who knows nothing."

Maybe you feel a warm sensation imaging that people talking about things you hardly grasp is due to ignorance... by the other side.

Re:Why does it have to be either/or?

[nagora]

If you think that a security ANNOUNCEMENT is the same thing as a security PATCH, you are beyond salvation.

When I have an app the size of Apache installed and the downloads required to fix a security hole total 10K, THAT is a patch. I don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about or why you think there are no patches in Gentoo. Almost all the large apps regularly patch under Gentoo, particularly GNU ones like Emacs.

You have some sort of emotional problem that I'm not qualified to treat so perhaps you should go and find someone who is.

TWW

Enterprises? bah

[matt me]

I'd be much more interested in the experience of desktop users.

Who owns CNet / ZDNet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paul Allen of Microsoft fame. Hmm. I wonder if his news organization will be fare and balanced to Gnu/Linux?

Re:Who owns CNet / ZDNet?

[dhasenan]

The Board of Directors for CNet doesn't list Paul Allen. Paul Allen's website doesn't list CNet among his holdings; neither does a search of Vulcan Capital, which he owns.

So, who owns CNet? A number of people--it's publically traded--but Shelby Bonnie is probably the main leader, being the cofounder, chairman, and CEO of the company.

Where did you get your information, I wonder?

Re:Who owns CNet / ZDNet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know anything about what GP was talking about either. cnet always has a pro-MS tone for my likings most of the time.

Anyway, googling around you can find some very interesting sites that link him with cnet.

Re:Who owns CNet / ZDNet?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ZDNet... Hmmm... Maybe Ziff Davis perhaps?

Stockholm syndrome

[metamatic]

There's nothing new about the phenomenon, either. I remember research back in the 90s showing that Macintosh users were all familiar with Windows, but that Windows users were mostly completely ignorant of the Macintosh.

In other words: Mac users who said that Windows sucked, generally did so from a position of knowledge, whereas Windows users who said that Macs sucked, generally did so from a position of ignorance. I expect it's still the case today, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that statistically, it's also the case with Windows vs Linux in the enterprise.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[marcosdumay]

Not even that new... There where some people at the VII century that started to even destroy the new machines at the great migration of the time. Of course, today people can`t really destroy Linux, but refusing to learn is quite a small protest.

Now, there are a few people that like Windows and complain about Linux from a position of knowledge. Up to now, I have met very few of them (in fact, I can only remember one), but Windows doesn`t suck universaly. Only almost all the time.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[kimvette]

In other words: Mac users who said that Windows sucked, generally did so from a position of knowledge, whereas Windows users who said that Macs sucked, generally did so from a position of ignorance.

In reality, both sucked. Windows 3.1 sucked harder than Mac OS, and Windows 95 sucked a little bit less than Mac OS.

Thankfully Mac OS is dead and buried and we now have OS X to admire, and Windows improved with Windows 2000 but hasn't changed much since then.

This sums up the "improvements" since Windows 2000: Windows XP? OOoh, look at the purty colors! Shiny! Hey, why the hell can't I copy my paid-for-downloaded music to my MP3 player?

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

" Mac users who said that Windows sucked, generally did so from a position of knowledge, whereas Windows users who said that Macs sucked, generally did so from a position of ignorance."

Kind of like how Linux users get modded up for making BSOD jokes. Position of ignorance and all.

Of course, I don't expect this comment to last very long here.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[metamatic]

The only reason XP/2003 stopped BSODing, is Microsoft made them automatically reboot instead. Once I turned off that "feature" I got my regular dose of BSODs.

In contrast, I've had exactly 1 Linux crash ever on the same hardware.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"The only reason XP/2003 stopped BSODing, is Microsoft made them automatically reboot instead."

Mm hmm. Meanwhile, I have personal experience across a wide variety of machines that XP and 2K does NOT BSOD. (I'm talking 20+ machines, not exaggerating.) Lots of people would back me up on this.

NT != 95.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[metamatic]

Yeah, and I have personal experience across a variety of machines (20+) that it does, and lots of people would back me up too.

Now you blame device drivers and anti-virus software, go on.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Now you blame device drivers and anti-virus software, go on."

Actually, I was just going to say I don't believe you. A stable Win2K/XP box isn't that hard to come by. You're either telling a tall tale or you've put the same piece of shit hardware in every single one of those machines. I'm going to laugh if you say they were all from Compaq.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[metallic]

I will back this up. In about 99% of the cases, this kind of behavior can be attributed to faulty hardware, mostly RAM from my experience. And this is coming from experience with literally hundreds of Windows XP machines.

Re:Stockholm syndrome

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Works for me.

Have a good night.

My conclusion: it's all about services

[brokeninside]

In the linked article, 2 out of the three companies migrated to Microsoft solutions based on services available from Microsoft because their internal IT departments didn't have the requisite knowledge to keep entirely open source solutions up to speed with regards to internal growth. The third company remained with Linux as a result of Linux services offered by Sun as part of a package with new Opteron based servers.

The other interesting bit is that a key part of decisions made in all three cases was the available software. The first two companies went with Microsoft because of Sharepoint. The last one stayed with Linux on Sun hardware because of 64bit J2EE.

Sounds like a shill

[Daengbo]

There are just too many references to "hidden costs" and the inability to find qualified admins -- one part even talks about moving to MS being part of the reduction of IT staff and another about consolidating five servers to two... who'd believe that? I seriously get the feeling that the first two stories were scripted in some way. Can't put my finger on exactly what tipped it off, though.

Wierd author

[villekesekene]

It seemed like the author of the article doesn't like Linux. I think he looked out especially for people who came back to Windows. In the end of the article he said his looking for people who migrated from Solaris to Windows :S. I don't think there are people like that :)

A revealing number

[romrunning]

In looking at the numbers, both of the organizations that went back to Windows had over 1,000 employees, and the other example listed had a little over 100. Both "back-to-Windows" orgs cited complexity as one of the reasons for the return to Windows. Is it possible that Linux developers have been too focused on each individual app rather than how the apps interact with each other? Who is responsible for the overall vision?

Re:A revealing number

[init100]

both of the organizations that went back to Windows had over 1,000 employees, and the other example listed had a little over 100.

You can have thousands of users on Linux too, you just have tou use the right software. I suggest looking at e.g. academic institutions for knowledge on how they handle many users on *nix systems. My university has more than 17000 students and some 3000 employees (professors, other teching personnel, administrative personnel, IT staff, etc), with many of them running both desktop and server systems on Linux or some type of Unix.

Re:A revealing number

[51mon]

I don't think so -- I think it is simply dearth of experience in the area.

Whilst ISPs have been using free software solutions for user management for years, and love it because they can easily integrate any old third party software without coughing up money. You could probably group all the people who deployed such in a small stadium.

Skill in big directory services type skill on Unix/Linux is pretty sparse on the ground. Probably a lot more people like me around who've done integration with relational database for authentication and authorisation, done NIS, done NIS+, but look at LDAP and Kerbero,s and go "wibble wibble argh". I do PAM now and then as a Linux admin, but never frequently enough to say I'm know it, it is set and forget for most small companies, and most specific server set ups.

Heck even integrating "samba" into ADS has a pretty big learning curve. On the upside the people who have done that understand what the Microsoft systems are doing underneath (often this is the reason they are die hard GNU/Linux bigots).

I think this is reflected in the story, the company which is doing the big service for lots of users, loves the "we can roll our own solution" approach, as they only have to do it once for 2,000,000 users, for a limited range of apps.

The others are trying to find the skill to do these kind of things. Although if someone stuck email on the desktops in 1999 they were pretty lame, I was deploying IMAP4 on my home network by then, to avoid keeping email in proprietary formats on the desktop.

On the other side of the coin, whilst Microsoft have put some nice GUIs on top of ADS, the number of people who really understand Microsoft ADS and the security model is surprisingly small, and clearly didn't include a lot of people who worked on the built-in services for Windows 2000 at Microsoft. So a case of "its fine when it is working".

I'm very surprised at the comment about having to spend time managing GNU/Linux systems. Our experience is that it is the Windows boxes that "suddenly" do something odd, because of the lack of transparency, and poor logging (what you mean it can log filesystem corruption without mentioning which filesystem got corrupted ?). Similarly surprised at comments on server consolidation, my experience has always been that Windows almost invariably ends up being deployed on more boxes, either for performance reasons, or to separate services because of the frequent needs for reboots when applications are updated.

I suspect a lot of the "benefits" here would have accrued, be throwing out the old, and bringing in the new, whatever the new was.

Re:Feeling homesick?

[renoX]

I think that it is LDAP which frustrated them, I understand that: this thing is a *mess*!!

dn,cn, etc...

Uh, I bet it was designed by commity, I have yet to find one clear explanation of this thing.

OTOH, Active Directory is easy to understand and use..

Wasnt this more poor planning and lazy IT dept?

[martonlorand]

They said, they had 2 people to fix problems or really manage linux? Thats really a problem, but obviously nobody was smart enough to figure out LDAP or some RADIUS solution for VPN.In this case they should have hired some more open minded people or send a couple IT staffers to take a linux 101. Heck maybe even buy some Linux for sysadmins books.

Emails stored on desktops?Bahh..Unable to recover deleted stuff? Looks like the backup routine wasnt designed properly either. Microsoft solutions might work for them because they had a couple experienced MS consultants do a thinking for them. How about hiring some Linux brains for consulting?

Bottom line: IMHO especially in the radio stations case the problem was lasy management and if I'd be in this guys shoe I wouldnt be so proud of myself. This is true in the other direction too. Dont be proud of yourself if you cant desing and implement something. Put some thinking in the process or put out some $ for somebody else to do it for you.

What I get out of this..

[MrCopilot]

Australia needs Linux IT Pros.

They have nice weather in Australia right. http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDE00902.loop.shtml
Oh still not too different then FL. Excuse me while I check Monster.com, G'Day

Linux still stuck as a server

[J.R. Random]

Note that the one Linux success was for a classical, pure, high volume server application. The failures were where there was a premium on collaboration across multiple sites and use of multimedia. In short, Linux still shines as a server, as it has for many years, and still sucks for anything else at the enterprise level. No, I'm not a Microsoft troll. I'm just pointing out that the open source development model has yet to deliver the tools many big corporations need.

Re:Linux still stuck as a server

[cranos]

The main problem I see from the two companies that went back to windows is a complete lack of planning on the initial Linux install. As someone else has pointed out, the Windows migration seems to have been planned out to the letter whereas the Linux migration was carried out in the heat of evagelical ardour, never a good thing. If the Linux migration had been planned out as well as the Windows migration appears to be, would they have had the same issues?

If you...

[jd]

...change "setup time" to "setup thought", I would completely agree. The problem with Linux is not the time to set it up (which is roughly comparable to Windows, sometimes less), but rather the time it takes to figure out what you actually want.

A simple example would be deciding on your e-mail system. Sounds easy, right? And it is. If you know - in advance - what sort of e-mail system it is you actually want. Just saying "e-mail" doesn't tell you very much. If you need a great deal of power in the mail processing engine, you're probably going to want Sendmail. If you need to blast through vast quantities of e-mail very quickly, Postfix is a better bet. If your company is relying on Exchange services, then you're looking at something like Open Groupware. If you aren't using Exchange clients, but do need similar services, then OpenXchange might do what you want.

That's just for e-mail! Then you have to think about all other intranet services, which have a similar level of flexibility. Internal web services with static web pages will be better off driven by Tux. Java servlets, these days, really mean Apache, as they're the ones mostly working on that capability. Basic scripting with reasonable power and reasonably dynamic content would probably mean Roxen.

If you want virtualization, you've three entire tiers - total machine simulation (vmware), heavyweight containers (xen) and lightweight encapsulation (vservers). If you want to admin the box, do you edit the config files, use Red Hat's scripts, use Linuxconf, or use webmin? And the list of options goes on and on and on.

On the one hand, the choices give an aware user a fantastic level of power and almost superhuman control over their system. On the other hand, it means that you cannot approach this with a turnkey attitude. This should be no great surprise. You can drive a roadcar with a turnkey attitude and expect to get from A to B in one piece. This isn't going to work in a Formula 1 racing car or an X-15 experimental aircraft. Why should it? If you act as though these are all one and the same, your efforts to transfer over WILL fail. This is not a limitation of these vehicles, it is a failure to recognize that simplifications that are true in one case won't hold for the general case.

Let's look at one of the big complaints I've heard for Linux - a lack of wireless card drivers. How many of those who are complaining have actually looked for additional drivers? My guess is that half the complainers have not, and that the majority of those would find that a project just as madwifi would provide the drivers they want. There are a few others listed on the Linux WPA Supplicant page. "But we don't want to install 3rd party drivers!" That wasn't the complaint - the complaint was that the drivers didn't exist. If I can find the drivers, and they DO exist, I will have zero sympathy for those who then come up with further excuses - because if the complaint has to change each time it's proven wrong, then all it is IS an excuse.

My guess is that almost every single case of a company "needing" to switch from Linux to Windows will - on closer examination - prove to be a case of nobody bothering to figure out what the company actually wanted, OR nobody bothering to figure out how to get Linux to provide it. There will be VERY few cases - although such cases will happen - where Linux really isn't a good fit, which is a limitation of Linux, but I seriously doubt that more than one in a thousand migrations from Linux to Windows fits into that category.

Re:If you...

[Bert64]

In a business where IT isn't a core part of the business, what you really need, are skilled consultants going in to set up the initial system, and talking with management and staff about their requirements, providing limited management (add/remove users and little else) to management staff via a web based interface, and then coming back periodically to check on things.
In situations where this has been done, it has worked well, and typically unix based systems have been chosen because there is little need for maintenence.
The problem here comes from greedy consultants, who intentionally set up a flakey system because they then charge by the hour for maintenence (flakey system == more maintenence time == $$)

Bad planning and lack of skilled people

[the_arrow]

After reading the article (yep, I did read it), it seems to me that for the two companies that switched back to Windows, the Linux-switch was not very well planned and the needed skillset was not there. The switch back to Windows was on the other hand very well planned.

Interesting notes

[tweek]

While I'm a Linux/UNIX guy through and through, I understand times when Microsoft makes sense. If your core comptency is Windows, why the hell would you switch without expecting growing pains.

Having said that, and not begrudging the first two companies for switching in the least, let me point out a few problems I see (based ONLY on the article body) that stood out:

Austereo:
"For example, remote users struggled to grapple with a virtual private network (VPN) login system that required three different passwords to establish a connection"

- I'm curious what VPN solution they were using. I would think that from a pure cost perspective, going with a hardware VPN solution that provided hooks for existing authentication integration would have been a wiser choice.

""We were assured that there were procedures and processes you could follow to recover down to the individual message, but when it came to reality, it was a lengthy process and an absolute nightmare.""

- This is most definately a problem with most entirely opensource solutions. Zimbra has integrated message level restore into its product but having dealt with most open-source imap solutions, I have a feeling the solution had to be developed in house. I know how to read maildir filenames but YOU tell me what the hell email this is:

1145900957.V804I55c4037.mail.servername.com:2,

""Importing our network environment and applications onto a new platform required some fairly specific skills," he adds, "and those skills were not abundant within the group."

- This is the crux of the problem as mentioned earlier. I don't think they had the skillset on hand to manage the infrastructure.

The other problem I see near the end of that page is that they did a full desktop migration to Linux. This was probably the biggest mistake they made.

Coffey:

"The way they set up their Linux-based infrastructure had promoted the silo mentality; information wasn't stored in any sort of intuitive manner, and it wasn't easy to access information across the various geographical areas. If you weren't in the Brisbane office, for example, you couldn't access that information. There was just nothing from the information point of view that was encouraging collaboration."

- Poor design can happen in Windows just as Linux. This isn't a Linux-only problem. Sounds like a lack of planning or initiative to do things right from the start. I understand that business moves fast but you end up shooting yourself in the foot and having to redo things if you don't think about these things up front.

"After four months, Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange Server 2003 had replaced now-discontinued Linux servers to provide a consistently managed, centralised messaging infrastructure across 20 Coffey offices. "Previously, all the e-mails were effectively stored on the desktops and there was no central location of the data," Parsons explains. "That's a nightmare both because of litigation, and because of duplication across the company and all the problems that duplication brings."

- Sounds like someone needs IMAP and not pop3. There are also plenty of turnkey email solutions for litigation archiving as well. Most of these implement a SMTP gateway to your existing system.

""They initially thought Linux was going to be a cheaper platform," he says, "but as soon as they started to expand they became aware that the hidden costs of Linux were all over the place -- not only in real dollar terms, but because they weren't using the environment intelligently because of the [limited] skill sets.""

- Again it looks like another case of lack of skillset available.

Wotif.com:

Nothing specific jumped out at me. One thing I thought was interesting was the amount of planning(!) that went into the switch. I also notice mention of actual vendor support contracts.

"Wotif's strong adherence to plain-vanilla J2EE development"

"Oracle10g Standard Edition"

"We did a very critical pilot for th

There is no this or that

[C_Kode]

A smooth running enterprise runs a mix of both Windows and Linux. Today Linux isn't ready for the collaborative areas of enterprise. (Sales, marketing, or executives) Although, you always have the grunts in the office space and they general can use Linux as a desktop. For the server market Linux can and should carry the most load. There are area where Windows is better. (Exchange as a collaborative suite over an SMTP & IMAP/POP3 mail operation) On the other hand, MS SQL server has some nice features and can be a very good performer as a database. ...just not on my network. I don't see a need for it. There are many other options that can work just as well and without the MS overhead required. (sharing the SQL server with several applications causes slowdowns Like Accounting/Citrix/Backup Exec all using the same SQL server) We have 2 MS SQL servers now.. There were here before I arrived and cannot be ported without major pains envolved. (money/time) Anything new that requires a DB will not run SQL server unless that is the only DB it can use and it won't happen without a fight. (anyway, MS SQL server doesn't support what I consider *real* clustering (see Oracle RAC))

Anyway, my perfect setup would carry both platforms in specific rolls. Have everything running one technolgy limits your abilities. The old cliche still holds true. The Best Tool for the Job. Be it Windows, Linux, or whatever other tool works.

Linux DOES Coffee

[sgt scrub]

"to do everything but make the coffee."
Yet another poorly researched article from ZiffDorkus

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Coffee.htmlOne of the most memorable comments about software ever said is whether this or that piece of code can make coffee. Coffee is a world commodity that is second only to oil. Linux DOES make coffee; and it tastes good as well!

Making The Coffee

[BearInTheWoods]

From TFA: "If you listen to the hype, it's being used everywhere, in businesses of all sizes, to do everything but make the coffee."

Actually, GNU/Linux has that covered too:

==> head `locate -i coffee | grep -i howto`

Coffee Making
Fotis Georgatos < gef@ceid.upatras.gr>
V1.0 2004-08-29

One of the most memorable comments about software ever said is whether
this or that piece of code can make coffee. Coffee is a world commod-
ity that is second only to oil. Linux DOES make coffee; and it tastes
good as well!

This HOWTO describes the use of a parallel port circuit to control a coffee machine.

Yes, GNU/Linux really can do everything. :^)

Re:Skill problems - blame the custommer

[Pipelino]

Here we go, I didn't really have to wait that long... Whenever there is a post about the Windows/Linux war, Linux zealots feel they have to destroy by any means whatever negative input they hear about their preferred system (or whatever positive input they hear about their archi-rival). This is called "a defensive attitude", and is easily recognized by everybody, as one of their arguments is the typical "blame the user" argument. You all know, that comes back from those far, far away Unix times... The user is stupid and he has been lied to all along, therefore bugs don't count, and their pain can only be self-inflicted. System administrators are just as stupid, even worse, they are incompetent...
I think that attitude is directly responsable for Linux not gaining much more market than it could: it despises users. The articles are pretty clear for the reasons two custommers switched to Windows: they perceived Linux as too hard to manage, and they couldn't just fill all of their needs. About Coofey Intern., it says "Costs are down, too: just 11 IT staff now support 1,600 Windows employees " and "there's very little training required for them to understand how to use it" (who can say that about Linux ?), and "they weren't delivering what they needed to deliver". Why not believe them ?

I am just asking: where does it says that a company should play with IT, and forget to be productive ? If I estimate that I can't have non-scalable costs because of the additional competences needed, is it worth it ?

Re:Skill problems - blame the custommer

[__aaitqo8496]

Maybe you need to re-read the comments. No one is bashing anybody. The point was simply made that the reason for failure was lack of knowledge/skills.

If anyone, you should be blaming the sysadmins for THIER ignorance. Despite that I work and live in a Windows environment, doesn't mean I don't/can't learn about another OS.

I bought an iPod recently and had a great deal of dificulty opperating iTunes. This showed me how used to Windows and/or Linux apps I was. I'm not used to the streamlined interface that Apple is famous for. Who's at fault here? As the Mac-ignorant person, I assume responsibility.

But that's the problem with many people, lack of personal responsibility. But what do I know, you probably troll the Slashdot forums, waiting to bash Linux zealots, you damn Windows junkie.

Sharepoint - or Domino/Notes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sharepoint isn't that good. In fact it's still behind where Lotus Notes was in the mid 90s. Now Lotus Domino - the server side of Notes - can run fine on Linux. You don't have to go a fully open source system. You can run Domino on Linux and access it through a web client, or perhaps through Notes on Linux. I don't know if Notes runs natively on Linux now, but it ran fine under Wine when I tried it.

Doesn't Notes have pretty much equal share with Microsoft in America?

You don't know what you don't know

[WebCowboy]

Their problems were that they wanted features they weren't finding in Linux, but did find in Windows.

WRONG. The problem was that they weren't aware that Linux-based systems acutally COULD do what they wanted and a Microsoft marketroid came along and showed them how it could be dome with Windows. Both examples of the reversion to Microsoft showed all the hallmarks of "you don't knw what you don't know"--not only did their IT people not know how to make Linux work for them--they weren't even fully aware of the capabilities of open source systems.

The articles mention one comany migrated to Linux 3 years ago, the other seven years ago. Did they really keep up with the fast-moving world of open source? In the anecdote about the company that stuck with Linux there was a fairly siginificant mention of upgrading both hardware and software, but in the other cases little to nothing was said about upgrading. It is entirely possible that the latter company was still runnning on their original Mandrake 6.x (or whatever it was in 1999) platform. Were they expecting their Linux systems to be magically immortal? If they implemented a Microsoft system in 1999, do you really think they'd be happy with NT4 and the big pile of manure that passed for Exchange Server at the time? I seriously think not.

I think the final solution of migrating (back) to another platform was too drastic, and that these companies dropped the ball when it came to examining the open source alternative. Three passwords to log into a VPN? Email boxes stored on clients? Lack of collaberation tools? COME ON! You can set up a Linux server to allow a Windows client to log in without any extra passwords. It isn't hard to set up a secure IMAP server using Postfix to manage mail server-side either, and there are "Exchange replacements" that may fit the bill if you need to do mare than just manage email centrally. There are a bazillion "portal frameworks" out there, and Subversion can be used as a collaberation tool for more than just computer code. I know this can all be done because I've done all of that myself. These people are lazy and uncreative and didn't even try to find a more elegant approach to solving their problems. Instead they let a Microsoft salesman sell them a sledgehammer to drive in their 10-penny nails.

These stories also underscore a problem with the Linux community as well, however. Microsoft made themselves readily available. They have an education programme that turns out MCSEs faster than rats can breed. The Windows brand is everywhere and they make it very clear with every release "what's new". Where were the Red Hat and Novell people when these Linux shops were struggling? Why isn't red-hat more agessively marketing and expanding RCHE certification? What about LPI? And as far as marketing goes, IBM has done a bit but Linux is far from front and centre, and the marketing presence of Red Hat and Novell is next to nothing in comparison to Microsoft's mega-campaigns that contain heavy dollops of information (or mis-information in some cases). Yes, MS is the big man on campus and has the resources to pull all this off the best, but it's going to take a huge marketing and support effort by the Linux community to make sure we not only convert more people to Linux but to retain them as well.

Re:You don't know what you don't know

[DuckDodgers]

Why isn't red-hat more agessively marketing and expanding RCHE certification?

They are aggressively marketing it. It's full page ads in the industry magazines, it's right on the Red Hat website, it's the first link for "Linux Certification" if you do a Google search on the topic.

It's a simple chicken and egg dilemma. Useful certification programs are demanding and expensive. Microsoft software is prevalent, so your average IT fellow is already comfortable with the tools and has a comparatively easy time convincing his employer to fund MCSE training. Red Hat is a Linux juggernaut, but it's still tiny in the industry at large. Most people considering the Linux training will be starting near the ground floor, paying the expensive tuition entirely out of pocket, and using their own vacation time to attend. Hopefully the balance will shift as Linux marketshare grows.

I agree with everything you're saying, though. There needs to be a larger pool of competent Linux system administrators for companies to draw upon.

Re:Bad planning and lack of skilled people

[Anonymous Coward]

Working with Microsoft consultants, he and his team sat down to map out their future infrastructure and found that their requirements could be easily met using an integrated suite of applications built on top of Windows Server 2003.

I'd say you put your finger right on it. If they had equally qualified Linux consultants, they may not have run into the trouble in the first place. With the Microsoft system, they are getting support and planning, both of which they need. Why shouldn't they think they need support and planning for a large Linux system, and why wouldn't they plan for that?

Wotif.com story not really about Linux vs Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Wotif.com could have been equally successful on Windows. The most important switch was not Linux, it was ASP to J2EE, from SQL Server to Oracle, and the hiring of top-notch developers.

The untold parts of the Wotif.com story:
* It was the J2EE consultancy ThoughtWorks that pulled them out of their ASP hole and helped them move to J2EE on Orion App Server.
* The DB stayed on SQL Server for quite awhile, until performance issues became too much of a hurdle. The key there is Oracle vs SQL Server, not Linux vs Windows.
* It was at Wotif.com that ehcache, the default cache plugin for Hibernate was developed, by people employed by ThoughtWorks.

The real benefits that Linux gave over Windows here are:
* The move to the 64-bit architecture which overcame memory limitations and allowed them to continue the heavy use of caching JSP requests and search results.
* Developer productivity and "happiness" -- high quality J2EE developers often prefer to develop on Linux.
* Ease of system administration

Shame on me.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Welp, I figured you'd appreciate a good laugh. My computer froze tonight. A couple of hours after rebooting, it BSOD'd.

No real point to make here, but considering the time frame, I figured you'd enjoy a good laugh at my expense. I certainly deserve it.

G'nite, man.

Re:Skill problems - blame the custommer

[Pipelino]

Oh God no, I am certainly not trying to bash the Linux zealots, even if sometimes I can have some kind of an extremist language. However, I also don't believe that you should take all of the blame for not liking the iPod interface... even more, you should not accept it at all, and eventually, you should ask your money back.
System administrators will not follow your reasoning: they want something from a product, and if it isn't there, they won't buy into it. Even if that is beaucause of ignorance, incompetence, etc. In economics, ideals do not always count. For example, you accepted the challenge to learn a new system, or rather a new interface, because you had certain expectations that eventually are fulfilled, and that's because they are studied and understood by Apple engineers. The fullfillment of those expectations is what keeps you satisfied, and eventualy, prevent you to throw it in a trash.
However, the path to retain Linux at an enterprise level is a lot, lot more difficult than that, and for some users and administrators, it isn't worth it. And I believe that, even the recent upgrades and usability improvements in Linux distributions, Linux still has a long way to walk through, and still is a very difficult system for most (if not all) non IT-savvy users. And that as long as Linux distributors don't understand the reasons, or keep defensive on their own users, they will fail at their goals (to free the world from the evil M$).