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Novell Assents To "Windows Is Cheaper Than Linux"
dyous87 points out a ZDNet article reporting that Novell has endorsed a customer's comment claiming that the total cost of ownership of Linux is higher then that of Windows. Novell and Microsoft jointly issued a press release quoting an IT guy for a UK-based bank, HSBC: "Some will be surprised to learn that our Windows environment has a lower total cost of ownership than our current Linux environment." The context of the comment makes it clear that HSBC's Linux environment has a mix of distros, and that a move to centralize around one distro — Novell's — will save money. Nevertheless, Novell's connection to this assertion is not likely to improve their reputation in the open source community.
This is coming from a bank. They probably spent ridiculous amounts of money verifying linux is secure. They probably take microsofts word for it.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
If all you want is a machine to look at spreadsheets on, there's nothing wrong with windows. Hell, for a lot of people it's fine - if you're behind a firewall, who cares? The computer is just a tool to get the job done.
When you're looking at managing systems en masse, it's different, and it gets really different with servers - that's where microsoft's liscencing comes back to hurt them.
..don't panic
... it must be true!!
In the release, Matthew O'Neill, group head of distributed systems for HSBC Global IT operations, states that the bank's existing Linux environment is more expensive to maintain than its Windows environment. "Some will be surprised to learn that our Windows environment has a lower total cost of ownership than our current Linux environment." - they forgot to mention that the GNU/Linux environment consisted of 10,000 boxes and the Windows environment was only 3 boxes and 2 of them were down most of the time.
Ok, I just came up with this, but it's not different than what the 'article' is saying, there are no details at all, it's all just hand-waving and no facts.
You can't handle the truth.
I think this has to do with the SAs. Shops running mostly windows servers will have windows-saavy SAs. I say if you have a good linux SA, the TCO will be less for linux. If you have windows SAs doing linux, then of course TCO for windows will be less.
Where I work, we have had many more problems with our linux web servers than with our windows servers. I chalk it up to the fact that the team that manages our servers has WinTel in their group's name. Windows and Linux administration are two different skill sets. But somewhere along the line, someone decided that they'd rebadge a few windows SAs as linux SAs, which in my estimation, is a mistake.
blah blah blah
In the article he is comparing the cost of a varied and diverse *nix mashup with a comparatively homogeneous Windows world. Sure, support a couple of versions of Windows versus 12 variants of Linux? Yep, cheaper. Fine. But the POINT is that standardizing on one Linux Will Save Money, compared to many versions, OR compared to Windows.
On the one hand, we OSS advocates can't afford to live in a dream world. If Windows is cheaper than Linux, we need to know about it, know why, and fix it. So from that angle I'm glad MicroNovell assented to it.
But we also know that statements like this are typically used out of context, especially by the professional liars who do advertisting for a living. Somehow, when MS runs ads talking about TCO, they'll forget to mention all of the qualifications that accompany this case study, such as the fact that it had a mixed Linux environment. So from this angle, I almost wish that MicroNovell hadn't assented at all, since it's likely to be used to mislead the general public rather than make them wiser.
The only reasons I can think of are that
We have one Windows machine here used for testing. The rest are Linux. Technically all of these Linux machines cost more than that one Windows machine. So I suppose I too could say my Windows environment costs less than my Linux environment.
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Hongkong and Shanghai are no longer part of the UK. You need to update your map (I hear Google has good maps).
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in some environments, windows makes more sense than linux
in other environments, linux makes more sense than windows
the truth is bland and unexciting
linux zealots and microsoft ad execs may have more exciting things to say on the subject, but they're just deluded or lying
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The word you're looking for is "than". Dammit.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
How the open source community views Novell is reminiscent of the madonna-whore complex.
1. We can only love a perfect(technically) and chaste(doesn't screw msft behind our backs) woman
2. However we want her to be sexy(successful) and do the nasty(make money).
In essence we can never be satisfied with a company's performance and also love them at the same time. We are doomed to hate Novell and yet we desperately want her.
HSBC's long term TCO decision making strategies of late may be deemed... well... questionable.
It's not hard to find specific cases where Windows is cheaper. The problem is when people use specific instances of cheaper TCO using linux or Windows to generalize which one is cheaper for other cases. It is easy to find specific cases where linux is the better option and others where Windows makes more sense. Finding examples however does not answer the question of which is more cost effective in general. I'm not sure there is a good way to answer that other than to assume that companies are rational enterprises and that they will gravitate over time towards to most cost effective solution. Installed base size might be the best available (albeit highly imperfect) measure if you accept the above premise. If linux is growing in market share, that might be rationally construed as evidence that companies are finding the TCO of linux to be lower. It's not the only factor of course but I think it is a reasonable inference.
For the desktop machines in my company which was cheaper depended entirely upon how we used the machines. We ran our servers on SuSE linux but for the desktop machines we needed specific applications where the linux alternatives were sufficiently inferior as to make them not cost effective. For our server needs there was no comparison, linux was vastly more cost effective. TCO is specific to the needs of the organization and/or individuals using the product. Its going to differ on a case by case basis and we would be foolish to generalize our needs to that of the IT community at large.
I wonder if Novel fairily included the higher cost to make a Windows system as secure as a Linux is.
Now, please note that much of that security is based on "security by unpopularity". However, if Linux were to become more popular, then the costs to find trained people and to pay them to support Linux would drop, probably just as much as the security costs went up.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
a statement.
/.ers, it's not Windows).
TCO of Linux being higher than Windows wouldn't completely surprise me given my own personal experience with the OS, though hearing other people's experiences, I would not bet on either outcome. It, in several of it's incarnations, has given me more grief than almost any other OS I've used/administrated (there's only one worse I can think of, sorry
That being said, I'd still like to know -
is this weighted per machine on comparison, or per desktop in one set, per server in another, or is it just overall -
- If it's the latter, than TCO will be best on whatever system is used least.
- If it's the per server/per desktop, then it's a good measure
- If it's per machine, whichever has the highest desktop:server would probably win, so it's again unfair/biased.
Also, as it's stated, there are multiple distros; with how differently things are done, I wouldn't except a low TCO for multiple distros. My experience stems from 4 major distributions, totalling maybe 10-12 versions, the administration of different distros seems to be quite high, making multi-distro administration also a challange. That right there tells me this is biased against Linux.
Finally, learning cost: Learning is a sunk cost, and not an over-time cost. Was this TCO over the first year, or was it over a longer time? Did it involve a time-related cost projection? This is relevant because most of the users would have come in knowing how things were done in Windows, but not Linux, some of the admins may have even come in that way. The initial training cost would have been comparatively high compared to the new employee training cost - another VERY important factor that most likely biased this report against Linux. Anyone know if they actually put up facts about this?
A lot of words said and conclusions made in TFA, but at the end of the day, I don't feel any more educated than before - they just gave no useful or novel (/new/ not book or corporation) data.
34486853790
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As with many things, when you save money it doesn't necessarily mean you've got more "money in the bank" it just means you have more to spend on other things. Where I work we're a mixed windows/linux shop, and moving more towards the linux/FOSS route all the time.
Does that mean money saved overall, no. What it does mean is that money that would have been spent on X (software licenses, etc), is now spend on other stuff (aging infrastructure, upgraded network, etc and lots of other things that would have otherwise stay or been delayed in upgrading). There will always be places to dump cash, and what most of these studies don't seem to incorporate into the "studies" is that dollar for dollar, the spending might be the same or more for FOSS, but the results might not be the same nor what the money was spend on.
The point being?
Who sold his birthright to Isaac.
And the New Testament says of him "that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it dilligently with tears."
Maybe there is a warning for Novell on a business, non-spiritual level.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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HSBC is the very same bank that is most heavily exposed to the subprime market right now, which is under a lot of stress, needless to say. When I read the summary, I was thinking, "Yeah, HSBC sure knows how to save money..."
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
It's hard to take anything novl claims about msft seriously. This seems like more bought-and-paid-for msft brown-nosing. Very similar to the all the bogus "think tanks" that msft bought, or all of silly msft sponsored astro-turfing, or all the phoney-baloney msft sponsored TCO studies, or all the msft paid analysts that gush over msft. And doesn't msft pay bloggers, and message board posters?
Frankly, I don't see how any reasonably well informed person can believe anything positive published about msft. Msft pays for good PR in every way imaginable.
"The pear? Pffth. Bring me.... the COMFY CHAIR!!"
Well, I certainly didn't expect that.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Great, now we know that the TCO for a mixed Linux environment is higher than for Windows. And what does it mean?
3 0215)?
Did they calculated the costs by taking the productivity of their personal into account, the increased security risks and possible costs for disaster recovery ( like an employee responsible for account creation, who had a keylogger installed, yesterday news http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/14/13
What does it really mean, if you don't get the details of the entire installation and their calculation? Training people on new software is certainly the biggest costs, training people on a closed source system just means that security is controlled somewhere else and that users will not understand, can not understand and will make errors, which put your business at risk.
Sure, Linux can be attacked as well, but once there is a critical bug known, you can react by getting a patch, disable that part or write your patch yourself (not that I could do it, but a programmer employed by a bank...)
Much better than a "patch/nopatch tuesday".
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
Those are two more valid possibilities.
34486853790
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If I am capable of installing Linux on an existing computer that is longer capable of running Windows because it is so bulky, how can it be more expensive?
The answer is: Running Linux isn't more expensive. In fact, it is less expensive. This does not prevent people from making the flawed and misleading argument that on a corporate level it is more expensive because people need to be trained to use Linux, whereas they are already familiar with Windows.
This is a logical fallacy at best, and deliberate misdirection at worst. The fact is, there are a lot of people who are very skilled with Linux who can provide excellent support for a corporate infrasrtucture. In reality, people generally need to be trained with Windows as well. The honest truth is the cost is about the same on the support side, and less expensive when it comes to software and equipment.
Of course, that's just my 2
I am open source, and Linux baby!
I wouldn't put much faith in the ability of HSBC to manage anything IT related. I work for a company selling trading software to top tier banks, many of them based in the UK. Overall, their IT staff are useless. Their seems to be two type of bank IT staffer - the permanent staff hired straight out of college, with no real world experience and no chance of acquiring any because the second kind of staffer, the contractors, do as little as possible but ensure their own job security by keeping the permies as ill-informed as possible.
This may sound cynical, but it is all too true. As an example, we had an IT person from one bank try to apply an update to their system by first untarring it on Windows and FTP'ing each file in turn to the Unix box. In the process they managed to change the case of all the files. This was despite the release notes (complete with cut 'n' paste, step by step instructions) telling them to apply the patch by untarring it on the Unix box.
Another example is a client who has switched from HP-UX to Solaris and now to Linux within the space of a year. With that kind of regular platform jumping it's no wonder this clients Windows TCO is lower than the one for Unix.
'In 2004, financial group HSBC launched an initiative to reduce the cost of supporting 300,000 desktop computers by 20 percent through rigorous standardization. To help achieve this goal, the company deployed Microsoft ® System Center solutions as an integral part of its new environment. Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 facilitates centralized software deployment, roaming user desktops, and the ability to track software usage to the individual user'
'To date, HSBC has realized an estimated U.S.$50 million to $75 million reduction in annual costs--expected to increase to $100 million by the time deployment of the new desktop standard is finished at the end of 2007
How can you save money by spending it on another system to help you manage a system that is supposed to be easily managed in the first place - Active Directory.
How does the Windows environment have a lower TCO than Linux. Do they have keep the Linux admins in a separate part of the building. Aren't they allowed to admin the Windows boxes. Do they cost more. Do the Linux updates take longer.
davecb5620@gmail.com
I have to disagree. After you purchase Windows then start adding on all of the other necessary software to run a enterprise Windows environment such as Ghost, Backup Exec, Disk keeper etc. and then tell me if it is cheaper than Linux.
IT services for open-source software represent 1.2% or $2.3 billion of the addressable 2006 North American IT services market. - Report Highlight for Dataquest Insight: Open-Source Software IT Services, North America, 2005-2010
Across all organizations, one-fifth say they use OSS. As few as 17 percent of midsize and large respondent organizations say they use OSS, and 28 percent of organizations of 500 to 2,499 employees claim they use OSS. - User Survey Report: Open-Source and Linux Software Support Services, North America, 2006
OSS services account for 1.2% of the IT budget, yet 20% of larger companies use OSS? So worst case, if less than 6% of the average company's software is OSS, then MS/NV are correct. If greater than 6% is OSS, then they are obviously wrong - due to OSS's relatively small market share.
Whore Yourself... @ http://whorapedia.com/
There is a real accounting procedure used by corporate accounts that could provide a comparison and that is Return on Investment (ROI).
Computers have a higher TCO than empty boxes. Computers consume electricity, while empty boxes consume none. Computers require staffing and software in order to be useful. Empty boxes require no software or staff. While it's true that employees are unable to do any work with empty boxes, this can save companies billions of dollars a year in payroll, as they do not have to hire employees. Also, there are significant savings because it is difficult to commit accounting fraud, or other white collar crimes with an empty box.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
I have found depending on what you are trying to do, the cost and support level vary considerably between the systems.
On the other side of the coin is many data recovery applications where the TCO is much less on Linux.
A prime example I had a friend bring be a dead laptop.. Won't even boot into the BIOS. Please recover my documents..
In Windows it requires finding an adaptor so you can put in both hard drives in one laptop at the same time and configure the drive as a second drive, etc..
In my case I put the drive in my laptop, booted Ubuntu off the CD. Mounted the drive and copied the My_Documents folder to a network share. Zero extra cost, no configuration (auto found my network and got an address).
I needed to burn an ISO to make a Ubuntu CD. In Windows the aparant choice is to upgrade the limited function CD burning software bundled with the machine or search online for free software (possibly trojan), scan it for viruses (purchased subscription application) and then burn a CD. On a Ubuntu machine, simply right click on the ISO and chose burn to CD.
To be fair, on the flip side of the coin, I do some MIDI stuff and DMX512 lighting. There are tons of free applications for Windows and only limited support on Linux. So the TCO study to be unbiased would point out there are applications where both have their high points. That is why I have a Windows machine and a Ubuntu machine and Live CD's for laptop data recovery.
In the enterprise where I work, It's a Windows environment because of the platform the vendors write for for our customised applications and embedded control and for hardware support of the same. I don't see any easy migration path away from the entrenched environment any time soon.
At home and on the desktop and on some fileservers and network appliances, it's a mixed environment is the lowest TCO. My Router and my Fileserver and my Printservers are all Linux based.
The truth shall set you free!
The TCO of Using Windows can and often is lower then the TCO of using Linux. But Linux can have a lower TCO then windows too. It depends on how you use them, and what you use them for. If you are going to do work the same way as you done in the past with running application localy on your system. Then Windows is the best solution. If you are going to have mostly all web/terminal based application, Then Linux will Win. Windows wins in a distributed enviroment where people have greater atonomy over their Computers, Linux works best in a situation where there is a few experts maintainging the systems and and the users are stuck with what they have. Both have there Ups and Downs but if you have a different configuration then there is a lower TCO. A good Linux enviroment will be a better TCO then a Bad Windows enviroment and vice versa if a Well planned windows enviroment is set up vs a crummy Linux enviroment then Windows will win. The problem is when companies switch to Linux from windows or try to switch they normally do poorly because they work in a windows mindset. Unix companies who switch to Linux are normally much more successful and reap a large cost savings.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Cost of purchasing is not COST OF OWNERSHIP. SUSE has "OpenSUSE" which IS free and pretty good. SLES, their competitive product to RHEL is VERY good and cheaper than RH. You pay for support, which many large business like to have. My company had to use our support agreement (which when we migrated from RHEL to SLES saved us nearly 50%) because of a bug in winbind. In under a week, the issue was fixed.
There are 3 degrees of the severity of lies:
Lies,
Damned Lies,
and TCO reports
-- Greywolf's Law of TCO
My blog
it's all the time spent by admins getting mp3s, wmvs and wmas to play for the managers; by the employees trying to figure out how to install weatherbug and webshots; how to install their favorite "free" game; and why won't mp3s play on this stupid os.... where is windows media player????
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
They were paid over 400 Million dollars to get into bed with Microsoft. If I paid a whore that much money I'd expect a lot too.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I would recommend that the guys at Novell read The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus. It'll prepare them for what's to come.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
How are they using windows? Did they not purchase the $4k DST 'patch' (yes, a patch) to fix Exchange's DST issue? Are they managing 1000s of workstations across an enterprise with something like ScriptLogic's Desktop Authority, which makes the hell of the broken Active Directory workable? There are un-foreseen costs attached. You pay one time for Windows, and then many times over for antivirus, directory services management, patch management, on and on. I honestly cannot believe Novell said this, especially when NDS was twice the directory service AD is today.
The costs to buy everything needed to actually make a Windows network, 'work' are exponential when factoring in all of the third party pieces that are ABSOLUTELY necessary to make an distributed network function well.
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Ever look at a piece of modern art and think, "my kid could do that in five minutes?" Ever think why theater is too out in left field for you? Well there is a strong connection between modern art and Open Source.
Open source works and is great, but lets face the facts people in the open source community are not willing to pay money for software, or even software support. They expect it for free. Look at the bottom line of Redhat vs any closed source company. Their bottom lines are massively different.
So Novell, like the modern art community is saying and doing the things that PAYING CUSTOMERS or PAYING PATRONS expect. Modern art is not for the benefit of the general community because the general community does not buy art. Hence artists when they hear, "oh my kid can do this in five minutes" will laugh in your face because you critique as a non-paying person is completely irrelevant. Your opinion does not matter in the least. Likewise I think with Novell and Open Source growing apart, I think Novell is saying, "hey you folks are not paying the bills thus we are going to do what is best for our clients."
I can't blame them...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
"Novell will NEVER save you money."
I'm sorry, but this is completely wrong. I don't like Suse's SLES or the company, based on their recent stupidity, but to suggest there's never a case where this expensive distro is to forget how bad Windows is for administration. If you have a hundred Suse boxes, that's gonna run you something like $35k a year. After spending that, you can (in some cases) get by with one $75k admin running the whole show. Now if they're doing a bunch of things, you will probably need another admin, but if it's a homogeneous group of machines doing something simple, it can definitely fall out that way.
A Windows admin will usually be a bit cheaper, but A) you still have to pay for server licenses, and B) There is NO WAY a single guy can run all those boxes. I'll defer to people who have been in this situation, but I suspect you'd need three guys to keep a hundred windows server farm from imploding.
You can stump for free distros (I very much believe that's the way to go) but a blanket statement like "Novell will NEVER save you money." is nutty and undermines your entire message.
Meanwhile parasitic? Hardly. These guys spend money on R&D. The money comes from corporations. Yes, they skim money from that process, but both Novell and RedHat add value which we all benefit from. Think of it this way: they get a cut as middlemen, and the service they provide is getting Ford and Chase and Shell Oil (and whoever else has more money than you or me) to PAY FOR LINUX DEVELOPMENT. That's doing well while doing good, and you should be all for it.
TCO calculations here are not because they pay for their distros, it's because they have no CLUE what they're doing. They didn't hire good Linux admins, so they lose. Probably they handed Linux boxes to Windows admins, and they automated almost nothing. TCO for Linux can be WAY lower than Windows, but if you run Linux like windows, and deal with it like windows, it won't be lower.
Bringing us to your last line "Stupidity is its own punishment." -- I agree. Both for HSBC and Novell, here. But as they blunder forward, they step on everything we've planted. We suffer too.
Something tells me you've never heard of WSUS (or SMS). 15 minutes to patch your boxes is 15 more than I've spend updating mine. It's *FULLY AUTOMATED* using WSUS. Oh, also, pushing updates to your clients take just as much time (none at all). I can push hundreds of updates to 2000 boxes in all of 0 minutes of my time.
The only thing that might be time consuming is deciding which patches you want to push or not, which would take just as long on linux. Once they're approved by you, they'll get there automagically.
Also, this way patches are downloaded just once from MS. Then you can have your WSUS sync/replicate (across sites or what not), and your boxes update from that (you obviously don't want 2000 boxes to hit windows update at once across an expensive T3 - what a waste of expensive bandwidth would that be). It's a pretty good system overall. WSUS 3 is in beta, and it's quite nice.
We can also push apps to workstations (using GPO and what not) in no time at all either. Set it up once, and just let it happen.
Linux is nice for many things, but it's not better in every single way for everything...
I'm sure there's ways or perhaps equivalents to Active Directory (OpenLDAP?), Exchange, WSUS/SMS and all that (and things like Samba for serving files), but I doubt it's easy to get it all up and working. It's deceivingly simple to get all this working under windows (especially with Small Business Server).
I'm thinking "so... the total cost of ownership to run an application server or database under Linux is higher than it is to run one out of 10,000 desktop PCs with Windows?"
Unless the boxes are used for the same, a comparison like this is irrelevant at best.
As for saving money by switching distros, that's probably peanuts in the overall budget. The big money usually goes to middleware and databases, and, depending on the company, long distance networking (which is likely to be a big chunk for Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp.). That won't change by switching distros.
Regards,
--
*Art
Getting the IT department to agree means nothing. It's a matter of picking one and mandating it. Of course, your argument goes around the fact that you don't have a choice with Windows, you better pick the one MS will continue to support (for a couple years anyway). If they don't have a mandate and half the systems are running XP, some running 2000, and some running 98, do you think the overhead is lower? Of course not, because they mandated what version people would be running.
This whole debate is a joke, statistics will say anything you want them to say. If I wanted Windows cost more then linux I would just combine factors that are negatives for Windows such as virus issues, required third party apps, security fixes, hardware upgrades required for vista, etc. In the end I could come back with a statistic that shows Windows is the cause of Global Warming if I really wanted to. Remember, statistics mean nothing unless you check the agenda behind the research.
Stick some apt-get commands in cron. You're done.
Oh, and let's not forget -- these are not just kernel updates. It's not even comparable to a Windows Update from MS -- every single piece of software on the machine is controlled by package management. Everything -- from a word processor to a web browser to a game to a mailserver to some random webapp that was nice enough to provide a package -- all of those will automatically be updated, and in the same place, with the same local cache (apt-proxy as one example).
Or use a distributed filesystem -- you can run the entire OS off the network. Not a thin client, but any change you make, every config file tweak you do, is instantly propagated over the network. This is actually pretty easy to set up... on Linux. I don't even know if it's possible to boot Windows off a network.
And by the way, 15 minutes of admin time is nothing when you consider other possible time sinks. I have to spend that 15 minutes maybe once a week, if I feel like it, and I really don't have to do much else. How much time do you spend?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Which caused quite a few turned heads at the office. Took a little longer than I expected, but its good to know I wasn't far off base.
Here's a back of the envelope calculation from the electronics company I work at.
TCO:
New Windows Machine Hardware 650
OS 279
Software 5,000-10,000
HOURS of installing and patching clicking OK, Next, Finish, Reboot, rinse, Repeat. Oh and Don't forget drivers.
New Linux Machine Hardware 650
Debian OS 0
Software 0
20 Minute install, unattended apt-get Updates.
Software includes Electronics Layout, Office, FlowCharter, Development tools( IDE, Compilers, Programmer, UML, Documentation), Solid Modeling, Project Management, Image editing, I could go on all day.
In my office there is a Windows 2000 Server, A WinXP Pro Right beside a Debian Development machine and another as Lamp Server.
Administration of the two windows boxes (Not to mention the 15 others) justifies my position as MIS. Administration of the two Debian boxes can be done remotely once a year in minutes.
I'm no big city, fancy accountant but I can say unequivocally (can you?) that OUR TCO is lower on our windows boxes than our windows boxes.
This is in just my office. All machines in the company are now running OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Inkscape, GhostScript, PDF Printer. and any other needed GPL tool that is cross-platform.
This method of transitioning to opensource is very effective. At first I got a few complaints and lots of skepticism. But quickly the bottom line starts to reflect positively and the people who matter, stop the complaining. I never again have to clean up IE related cruft and viri. We now have money in the budget to purchase Hardware instead of throwing it down the Proprietary Software Hole. When my phome intercom beeps I know it is a windows box calling for help.
I now spend most of my time developing Embedded Linux software instead of patching and reinstalling Windows and apps and I couldn't be happier.
Today the chief engineer asked me, "Why can't you just change it so it ignores that error?"
My answer was "You'd think I could, I mean, It makes sense that since the error is inconsequential to the operation of the application I could just change a few lines of code and we'd be golden. If we were talking about my machine I could do exactly that, But its Windows so I cannot. It's not just hard, its illegal. Just Restart the app when it happens."
"But, That's like 4 times a day."
"Oh well you could just call MS and ask them to check in to it. I'm sure they would be interested in fixing it for a big customer like us with our 25 licenses. Snicker..."
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
We get enough feedback from the Windows SAs and there is one truth: Windows do not scale. Period.
Secondly, we have seen our Intranets collapse under the weight of WIndows only virus or worm tha manges to evade our outher defenses.
I all the years I have been a UNIX SA I have never seen this with a UNIX (or Apple, VAX or many others for that matter) based machines.
I personally have been sympathetic to WIndows based solutions on occasions, just to be brought down to earth by people that knew better and that demonstrated to me why it was a bad idea.
Windows has its place (for now) on the desktop and on the groupware arena. ANywhere else it is a bloody liability waiting to bit you in the ass.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.