Microsoft Axes 'Get The Facts'

tom66 writes "Seems like a long time coming, as Microsoft today has axed it's Anti-Linux campaign 'Get the Facts', and Microsoft has replaced it with a new campaign, called 'compare'. This article touches up on why they may have done it, and the criticism surrounding Get the Facts."

Comments

Out with the old FUD.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Out with the old FUD, in with the new FUD.

I'm not going to bother with a line by line rebuttal, I'll note on the compare Windows to Linux page (which actually is about Red Hat, not linux), the last paragraph reads:

Open Standards != Open Source
Open Source is a software development and distribution model, which does not equate to how easily the software interoperates with other software or how open or standardized the interfaces are.

If you look in the corresponding MS section however, it doesn't touch on Open Standards (and MS's disregard for them) at all.

Typical of the sickening dishonesty we get from this predatory company.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[farkus888]

hey now, every piece of software that they want to be able to interact with their software gets the full specs on how to do it. which is to say they have access to their own standards, and fuck everybody else.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[ScrewMaster]

I was reading a while back that Microsoft does have internal communications problems between the operating system and applications divisions. I mean, sometimes the guys working on Office don't even have all the information on the secret APIs the OS folks come up with.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Sillygates]

How can "free" be this expensive? Red Hat's business is based on annual subscriptions for OS support--you pay a subscription for every server, every year. And, if you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more.

Did you know? Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced costs $2,499 per server per year without add-on features, like an application server and clustering.
It is a good deal compared to (the lack of) Microsoft support. People who want support comparable to what is offered by Microsoft can download CentOS (fully redhat compatible) or some other completely free distribution.

Red Hat includes the Yum update tool to help you download packages and software updates, but doesn't address IT professionals' broader needs--managing applications and workloads, like mail and collaboration, database and business applications.
Thats funny, because I have built rpms for my own applications. and I use custom yum repositories to keep track of, and distribute new versions of this software.
I hope they are not trying to compare this to the customization built into windows update.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Sillygates]

"Windows Server also supports a standardized, patterned approach to building systems. . .for example, for most of our major applications, we can build and distribute across the entire company a standard disk image without having to set up systems individually." --Adam Vazquez, Senior IT Manager, AMD
Partner yum with kickstart, and your application server can be built on your watch, without even laying fingers on a keyboard (simple %pre and %post targets allow a system administrator to script non packaged parts of the install). This offers a much less interactive solution than one would get with 3rd party windows products like norton ghost.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[buddyglass]

Without having pored over every detail, it seems pretty reasonable to me. I'm not surprised their comparison was limited primarily to Red Hat. It doesn't make sense to compare Windows to "linux", which is essentially the kernel. One has to compare it to one or more distributions. Red Hat is probably their biggest competition in the corporate space. It and SuSE.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Flamebait but seriously: the whole webpage is one big advertisement. Microsoft isn't even trying to hide it.

If you go into something like that, Microsoft or no Microsoft, expecting a fair comparison, you don't live on the planet Earth.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Whammy666]

Under the "reliability" tab, I read the case study for Continental AG. Here's a quote:

Continental first tested a Linux solution, but the company decided instead on a platform based on Microsoft® Windows Server(TM) 2003 Enterprise Edition and Windows® XP Professional because of the opportunity to lower costs and improve security. The new system architecture has considerably reduced IT costs at Continental AG.

The way it's worded implies that they replaced Linux with WS2K3 and XP, which saved all this money. But a more careful read shows that the original platform is unidentified (probably NT or such). Further, the discussion seemed to focus on the 24,000 desktops, not the servers, making this case largely irrelevant for comparing servers. An actual server comparison is never presented.

The bottom line is that this alleged proof of Windows superiority was done by comparing an anonymous and out-dated server platform against a more recent Windows server and then declaring Windows the winner over Linux with no justification given. WTF? Pure FUD indeed.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well actually Windows has had RIS (PXE boot/install) and IntelliMirror (Active Directory, Group Policy, MSI packages, etc) for eight years now. Sadly, many experienced admins still don't even realise how greatly it simplifies Windows administration and instead stick with crap third party products like Ghost and wonder why deployment is such a hassle...

Still, nothing beats the tasty combination of Debian Preseed, Apt and Puppet. It simply kicks ass.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interoperability by design
Microsoft approaches interoperability by design which strives for greater 'out of the box' connectivity for customers and partners.

What you're talking about? Due to solid standards, every windows version is (mostly) 100% compatible with other versions... sometimes.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[batkiwi]

Kickstart + yum pales in comparison the DDD + RIS.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

And now we have the truth. Any half decent pr0n filtering system will drop this discussion like a rock for having this comment in it. Think of it as a clever trick by M$ or backers to censor unfavorable discussion on the web about their products.

Or maybe this AC is just a tool.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Short Circuit]

Meh...Comments like that one have been posted by ACs for as long as I've been on Slashdot. They get modded down to where nobody sees them, including indexing bots. Also, if you look at some of the oldest archived Slashdot stories, lower-rated comments (including Score:1 comments) aren't there, period.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[tedrlord]

Kickstart + yum pales in comparison the DDD + RIS.

Wow, I never thought of it that way. Your convincing argument totally changes my mind about everything. I'm never using Linux again!

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[El Lobo]

Hmm... Really, I see no problem with this info. If the comparation had be done by some OS group, it would give the adventage to Linuxxx (pick your distro here). The true is that there is no black and white, but there is a lot of gray there in between for any OS.

Now, substitute Linuzzzz by OSX in that report and change places and you will see that this is the same fud that Apple has been giving out for ages now regarding OSX and Windows....

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[ozmanjusri]

Comments like that one have been posted by ACs for as long as I've been on Slashdot.

No, I think TENTH SHOW JAM might be on to something there.

These things DO pop up very early in most threads critical of Microsoft.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Antique Geekmeister]

Yum is actually. RedHat's embrasure of Yum is cluttered by their desire to not let clients download the update repository. This traps people into the need for the "yum-rhn-plugin", which ignores all the priority and preferred source settings of other yum repositories and puts the RedHat sourced.

This kind of DRM based craziness is one of the most compelling reasons to use CentOS, along with CentOS willingness to include NTFS drivers and more up-to-date software in their "centosplus" repositories. It's a shame, really: I'd happily get RedHat kernel and software support with licenses if they didn't waste my time this way.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a tool. No porn filter on the planet will or can inspect the entire HTTP stream, extract the text and filter it in a context sensitive manner. It would have to be capable of reading and understanding the text.

If your porn filter is so lame that it can't handle a few naughty words, Slashdot is probably blocked for you anyway because *gasp* people often say "fuck" on Slashdot! The horror!

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Edam]

This entire site is complete and utter FUD. Nothing but. It's absolute crap!

Some things don't even make sense when you think about them. This is an argument *against* open source:

Empirical evidence that the 'everyone can see the code' approach to software security doesn't work for Red Hat
Over the first 650 days of product life for Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Windows Server 2003 had 75 percent fewer published vulnerabilities.

Except, surely that means there's 75% more vulnerabilities found and *fixed* in the open source model, and 75% more as-yet undiscovered vulnerabilities in windows server 2003? Surely this is an argument in *favour* of open source!?

And I wont even go in to the length of time it takes MS to release fixes...

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[donaldm]

You do realise that CentOS is really a recompilation of Redhat source. In fact if you want you can install an RPM that makes it look like Redhat which Redhat will support. If you put Redhat on your machine you can change your repos which normally point to the Redhat repos or if you want a "satellite server" (this does cost but is great if you have many Linux machines). If you can maintain your own machines then you are still free to do this (change your primary repos) but you do need a license to access Redhat's repos.

As for yum there are many distributions that use it, CentOS (you can get commercial support for this if you want), Fedora and Scientific Linux to name a few. From Redhat ES 5 (dito CentOS 5) yum is the updating tool you should be using. The problem you do find with yum is picking the appropriate repos since some can cause issues with the software from primary repos. I always recommend that you update from your primary first then enable the other repos in order of confidence. IMHO never just update without checking what you are going to update first (eg. I never user the "-y" option when using the command line).

Yum for Redhat and also Fedora don't have proprietary code or codex's on their primary repos for very obvious reasons such as preventing possible litigation, however you are free to download and maintain from alternative repos that do have the code or codex's you want. Anyway if you have a Redhat maintenance contract for your company why would you download so-called "non-free" codex's and software, since you would be exposing your company to possible litigation. For home use, what you put on your machine is up-to you.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[c]

> ...sometimes the guys working on Office don't even have all the information
> on the secret APIs the OS folks come up with.

Having spent a little time (very little, fortunately) doing Windows app coding, I'd be incredibly surprised if they had all the information on the public APIs. Or the time to find anything.

I think much of the bloat in Office is because it's faster for the Office developers to re-invent the wheel than to search the Windows API's for things to reuse.

c.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[mikael]

I think much of the bloat in Office is because it's faster for the Office developers to re-invent the wheel than to search the Windows API's for things to reuse.

Or maybe the standard API functions don't provide feedback on progress made. Suppose you want to implement a particular operation such as downloading a file using http. The standard API function call may just do the task and return, or timeout with an error. For a quality user interface you want a progress bar to indicate how far into the download the file has taken.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Gilmoure]

After the great compromise of ought-four, I thought we were under contract to use fark instead of fuck or fsck?

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh, I'm very familiar with the CentOS/RedHat distinctions. It's far more than one package of difference: especially for the port of RHEL 5, CentOS eliminated that insane separation among Server/VT/Cluster/my-refrigerator-butter-drawer/et c. that confuses software package management on the installation media.

Unfortunately, some of the repositories have interesting conflict issues. A kernel from Centosplus that supports NTFS by default will be overwritten by the the RHEL kernel, even if you set the Centosplus repository as preferred, because the RHEL repository plugin for yum isn't actually yum based. It's up2date based, and it seems to ignore all the yum directives except possibly the "--exclude" options of yum.conf. This seriously breaks software repository management.

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[pseudorand]

I get how the Routing Information Service could help you send your Windows image to remote offices faster, but what does Gnu's graphical debugger have to do with installing windows across your enterprise?

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[batkiwi]

What does something I do to start my motorcycle and something I say after a tasty meal have to do with linux packaging?

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[Goldberg's Pants]

you saw, you conquered?

Re:Out with the old FUD.

[hollywoodb]

How can "free" be this expensive? Red Hat's business is based on annual subscriptions for OS support--you pay a subscription for every server, every year. And, if you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more.

Did you know? Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced costs $2,499 per server per year without add-on features, like an application server and clustering.

It is a good deal compared to (the lack of) Microsoft support. People who want support comparable to what is offered by Microsoft can download CentOS (fully redhat compatible) or some other completely free distribution.

Red Hat includes the Yum update tool to help you download packages and software updates, but doesn't address IT professionals' broader needs--managing applications and workloads, like mail and collaboration, database and business applications.

Thats funny, because I have built rpms for my own applications. and I use custom yum repositories to keep track of, and distribute new versions of this software.
I hope they are not trying to compare this to the customization built into windows update. Don't forget:
http://www.redhat.com/rhel/virtualization/

Red Hat Enterprise Linux server subscriptions provide support for up to four virtualized guest environments. We recently dropped about $65000 on a storage system that will be running RHEL5+virtualization. And Red Hat is *very* good at working with customers that want to run many different servers. It doesn't really cost $2500 per server. If it did, we sure as hell wouldn't have seperate RHEL5 servers for email, irc, subversion, etc etc.

Get yourself in contact with a RedHat salesperson, don't quote the prices on their website. They're a good company, with good support; very willing to work with you on price and deployment.

Thursday August 23, 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft axes "compare" propaganda, replaces it with "Linux, eh, it don't make you a bad person"

Funny, the ad right below the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is telling me to Get the Facts...

Re:Funny, the ad right below the story...

[lordofthechia]

And if you do a search on MSN for "How to migrate from windows to Linux" the first site it returns is their "Get the Facts" webpage.

from microsoft:

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the /compare site will provide 3rd party information, Get the Facts will be retired as a destination." Destination? It's a web page, not a tropical resort.

Re:from microsoft:

[Anonymous Coward]

They just like it because in their minds they swap out Destination for Destiny.

Re:from microsoft:

[jd]

Hey, how do you know it's not a tropical resort? There was an island for sale on eBay recently and Bill Gates might have bought it. Besides, Blackpool is considered a resort, and there's a lot of similarities between that and Get The Facts. Since there's a replacement, all we can say is it's not the last resort.

The facts?

[jcr]

I guess too many people actually were getting the facts, and the upshot has been erosion of MS's server market share.

-jcr

LSB

[sybesis]

So Linux Standart Base isn't open standart?....

Re:LSB

[wanderingknight]

No, it's an Open StandarD ;)

Re:LSB

[cloricus]

Was it ever?

My take on the whole LSB is that it's Red Hat stamping their feet demanding attention and pretending they are still remotely important to the ever day Linux world.

The original version:

[weak*]

Microsoft Axes 'Get the Facts,' Announces 'Kill the Penguin' - Will commission Metallica to record a song to be played on the site.

Re:The original version:

[yanyan]

And the song will be called "Get the Axe"!

Thats good

[garphik]

Its nice to see some competition, that raises the level of the product

What Linux!?

[R55]

"Compare Windows to Linux"
Even in the earlier campaign they just refer to "Linux" in the print advertisements and they never specify which version of softwares on which version of distribution that they have compared (Once they had compared Redhat Linux 7.1 with Windows XP!).
It is time that responsible people from Linux Mark Institute take a note of this and sue them for libel!

Re:What Linux!?

[quanticle]

It seems to be a broad spectrum attack against many different Linux vendors, with most of the emphasis on attacking Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I did find some case studies highlighting people switching away from SuSE, something that I find interesting considering that Novell/SuSE is now a Microsoft partner.

Re:What Linux!?

[EvanED]

(Once they had compared Redhat Linux 7.1 with Windows XP!).

Depending on when this comparison was done, and with what service packs and stuff for XP, this may have been a fairly reasonable comparison. If they were comparing XP sans-service packs, RedHat 7.2 would have been the most apples-to-apples comparison. Both were released in October of 2001. It's even quite possible XP was out before 7.2, which would have made 7.1 an even more reasonable choice (though 7.2 would still have been better).

Of course, if this is XP+SP2 for instance, then that's totally off-base.

Re:What Linux!?

[loony]

it actually makes sense - SuSE and others are already occupied territory. So why bother emphasizing an attack on them? RedHat said they will not partner with M$, so of course the attack is focused on them...

As for them using SuSE switchers as example - the selection of examples is pretty limited. They had to take whatever they could get.

Peter.

Re:What Linux!?

[TractorBarry]

Then why not play along by creating an alternative "Get The Facts" site which compares "Linux" to "Windows..." The Windows in question being Windows 3.1 and Linux being only features of the current version of the kernel.

I'm only saying ;)

Re:What Linux!?

[tez_h]

Yes, amongst what others have already said, this vagueness will allow them to rhetorically project any deficiencies found in one one linix distribution on to the whole class.

-Tez

Snore

[WindowlessView]

diff "Get The Facts" Compare >/dev/null

If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[kwabbles]

The guy at the Ford dealership told me that Fords are more reliable, safe, and powerful than Chevys. He showed me a bunch of charts he made, and that made me feel better. He also had a nice suit and really nice white teeth, and smiled alot. Nice guy. What reason did I have to check out the Chevy dealership?

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[stubear]

Yeah, and OSS proponents are extremely honest when it comes to comparing OSes and applications such as Windows and Linux or Office 2007 and OpenOffice.

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I could mod you up.

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy at the Ford dealership told me that Fords are more reliable, safe, and powerful than Chevys. He showed me a bunch of charts he made, and that made me feel better. He also had a nice suit and really nice white teeth, and smiled alot. Nice guy. What reason did I have to check out the Chevy dealership?

Wow. You miss the whole point. This isn't about car dealership. It's about software business! Whoosh!

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[kwabbles]

No, they're usually not. But one thing I'll say for OSS proponents - you usually don't see them using a bunch of vague assertions, flashy buzzwords, unsubstantiated "facts", biased/self-sponsored technological reviews, and snotty PR campaigns.

The Linux community has nothing to prove. Microsoft does.

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[stubear]

"...vague assertions...unsubstantiated "facts"...biased/self-sponsored technological reviews..."

Please tell me you were being sarcastic there. I have read enough unsubatantiated "facts" and vague assertions about Windows on Slashdot alone to make your head spin. For instace, how about all the recent bullshit about DRM and HD playback on Vista, all perpeturaed by some paper written by a guy who states that he has never even used Vista and the readers should check the facts for him? I could go on but one need only to read Slashdot on a semi-frequent basis to see all the BS written about Windows and Microsoft.

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You DO read slashdot on occasion don't you?

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[kwabbles]

True, there must be upwards of a billion unsubstantiated facts and vague assertions about Linux on Slashdot. Some of them were probably typed by me. :) Slashdot is simply a mass of nerds chatting on a forum about the latest "geek scoop" - hardly a mainstream marketing/news outlet. You usually don't see your friendly neighborhood MBA getting on Slashdot to find out whether to use Microsoft or Linux for their new business.

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[JohnBailey]

Please tell me you were being sarcastic there. I have read enough unsubatantiated "facts" and vague assertions about Windows on Slashdot alone to make your head spin. For instace, how about all the recent bullshit about DRM and HD playback on Vista, all perpeturaed by some paper written by a guy who states that he has never even used Vista and the readers should check the facts for him? I could go on but one need only to read Slashdot on a semi-frequent basis to see all the BS written about Windows and Microsoft. And unless slashdot releases a Linux distro, your point is irrelevant. If you went to a Windows board or read the Windows fanboy posts, then the same applies. the two factions cancel each other out. Both sides have unrealistic cheerleaders. the Linux fanboys that expect corporate customers to use WINE to run their Windows apps, and the Windows fanboys who challenge every possible criticism about vista with " have you tried Vista yet". One is as bad as the other.

However, Red Hat, Canonical and others have not put up a site claiming the advantages of Linux over Windows using vague or stretched information that only a PR agency could call fact. And they would have to have a pretty big retainer to commit themselves that far. Microsoft (please note the lack of the traditional "$", so I can't be a zealot for either side) has replaced one misleading web site with another.

Neither OS can be held responsible for the actions or words of it's respective users, but they are responsible for their own actions. Didn't some hardware manufacturer get into trouble over the same practice years ago?

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[marcosdumay]

Well, for a start, they get no money from any choice you make.

Those people have a reason why they chosed FOSS. And have a reason why they are advocating it. You may not agree with their reasons, but they at least aren't on it for your money.

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[stubear]

Yeah, because these Slashdot users leave these opinions on these forums, they don't take them along to their workplaces or pass them along to friends and family when asked (or often when not asked as it sounds by many of the comments I've read in the past). It doesn't matter if it's a corporation or individuals en masse, FUD is FUD is FUD, period.

Re:If Microsoft says so, it must be true.

[JohnBailey]

Yeah, because these Slashdot users leave these opinions on these forums, they don't take them along to their workplaces or pass them along to friends and family when asked (or often when not asked as it sounds by many of the comments I've read in the past). It doesn't matter if it's a corporation or individuals en masse, FUD is FUD is FUD, period. I think you over estimate the power of slashdot.

First they ignore you....

[Techman83]

Then they laugh at you...

Then they fight you...

Then you win...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_VFKqw1q2Q

That about sums it up.

Re:First they ignore you....

[B3ryllium]

No... THIS sums it up.

(pwned! ;-))

Re:First they ignore you....

[Techman83]

Touché - Slashdot board meeting? :P

Re:First they ignore you....

[B3ryllium]

First! heheh

Someone on LJ linked me to this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpmGB3CPVk

(The one you linked was a really nice video, btw, I enjoyed it)

Re:First they ignore you....

[Techman83]

Hahaha Nice. Personally I think that the video is pretty powerful, history does have a way of repeating itself... Vista.... ME?? :P

Re:First they ignore you....

[B3ryllium]

Vista, ME, Windows 3.0 ... sometimes people compare Windows ME to Windows 3.11 (WFW), but having used 3.11WFW myself, I tend to disagree with them.

Re:First they ignore you....

[Goldberg's Pants]

Then they laugh at you...

Then they fight you...

Then you win...

Oh good grief, are people still peddling that tired mantra. I remember first seeing that on here in 1999 for fucks sake! Surely by that notion we should have won by now...

New Focus

[rlp]

They are no doubt focusing all their PR efforts on their forthcoming new product.

Re:New Focus

[Chabil Ha']

OK, OK, the broken email client, camera, and music player were obviously funny, but I'd love to have the rotary interface. I actually thought that one would be fun. In fact, I'd love to have a phone like that again just to bring back the good 'ol days...

Re:New Focus

[stubear]

How ironic that you bring Anti-MS FUD into this discussion. However, the rotary interface for the touchscreen phone is fucking cool and the ability to print pictures right out of camera would be awesome as well (hello inkless printers - http://www.zink.com/assets/how_it_works/). The e-mail thing is just plain fucking stupid as Outlook does an excellent job at filtering spam, hell even Windows Mail does a good job at filtering spam (perhaps you should try it instead of blindly bashing anything MS). The battery issue was just as dumb. The iPhone doesn't get great battery life and Apple, once again, makes the battery in their portable media devices unservicable by the user. If you need to get a new battery you're going to be without a cell phone until Apple fixes and returns yours.

Re:New Focus

[DigiShaman]

And here's another starring the Monkey himself. Apple would be proud! :)

Re:New Focus

[ozmanjusri]

How ironic that you bring Anti-MS FUD into this discussion.

Ok fanboi, here's a real one for you to drool over.

Presenting the Micrsoft oPhone!
http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007 /05/07/the-windows-mobile-ophone-video/

Re:New Focus

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at the B & O phone then.

Re:New Focus

[Phisbut]

OK, OK, the broken email client, camera, and music player were obviously funny, but I'd love to have the rotary interface. I actually thought that one would be fun. In fact, I'd love to have a phone like that again just to bring back the good 'ol days...

While not the rotary interface you are looking for, ThinkGeek has a pretty cool retro headset for your cell phone.

I guess "Get the FUD" wasn't politically correct

[syousef]

Although I do think someone should tell the to get the FUD out of here.

Microsoft copping:

[Progman3K]

>why they may have done it

Not to disrespect all the victims, but I imagine it's similar in feel to OJ's "If I did it"

Re:Microsoft copping:

[SmokeyTheBalrog]

There was just one (1) victim. Everyone else was crowding the bleachers.

Oh boy, it never ends...

[Eric Damron]

"Customers want to consume this information in a variety of formats..."

ODF for me please!

Seriously this is just a new FUD campaign. Example:

How can "free" be this expensive?
Red Hat's business is based on annual subscriptions for OS support--you pay a subscription for every server, every year. And, if you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more.

Okay Microsoft, we've been telling you for years but you don't want to get it. Linux is "free as in speech" not "free as in beer." That means that the users get a whole lot of rights that you wouldn't give in your worse nightmare. The freedom to redistribute. The freedome to modify. etc, etc, etc.

Stop with the FUD websites until you know what you're talking about please. Oh, I forgot. You already know all of this but are just misleading your prospective users. Yeah, that's the kind of company with which I would want to do business. NOT!

Re:Oh boy, it never ends...

[buddyglass]

Okay Microsoft, we've been telling you for years but you don't want to get it. Linux is "free as in speech" not "free as in beer." That means that the users get a whole lot of rights that you wouldn't give in your worse nightmare. The freedom to redistribute. The freedome to modify. etc, etc, etc.

Actually, "free as in beer" is one of the main advantages mentioned by most of the linux advocates I know. Certainly that's many peoples' perception. So it doesn't seem odd for Microsoft to address that misconception.

Re:Oh boy, it never ends...

[weicco]

You are partly right. Linux is free. Support is not. Now if you read it again like this:

Red Hat's business is based on annual subscriptions for OS support--you pay a subscription for every server, every year. And, if you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more.

Re:Oh boy, it never ends...

[luciofm]

And if you actually look at the pricing page at Red Hat site you will see that:

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform (Unlimited sockets)
Standard Subscription 1 year 12x5 phone support, 1 year web, unlimited incidents $1,499
Premium Subscription 1 year 24x7 phone support, 1 year web, unlimited incidents $2,499"

Where is the "if you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more."

And more.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL -5-manual/Cluster_Suite_Overview/index.html

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced costs $2,499 per server per year without add-on features, like an application server and clustering."
So how the fucking RH doesnt have clustering support, HA support...

"Compare" singles out Red Hat

[physicsnick]

Although there is a "Compare Windows to Linux" tab on the new Compare site, nearly all the material there is targeted specifically at Red Hat -- one of the Linux distributors that is continuing to refuse to sign a patent-protection agreement with Microsoft. Ah, so only the non-blessed distributions are inferior to Windows Server? As if Get The Facts wasn't bad enough; they've started to play real dirty. I don't see a page on redhat.com bashing Windows.

I'm very glad Red Hat is standing up to Microsoft and their shit. I hope people can see through this campaign the same as they did with Get The Facts.

cool support videos

[arghileh]

now i know where i can go to find out how to configure linux services the RedHat and SuSE approved way. Thank you microsoft for those VERY handy videos.

I'd like to thank you

[Tribbin]

2010:

I'd like to thank Mr. Microsoft for his contribution by sending bug-reports and wishlist items for linux in the form of a comparison back in 2007. Without your help we would not have surpassed the geek-approach of software.

Facts vs. Compare?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Microsoft was just having a problem conveying true "facts". So now they just "compare".

Sadly, common sense and IT don't mix.

[SmallFurryCreature]

I will tell you of an another great lie, a lie that has existed for decades and continues to be swallowed whole. It is not related but it shows how people lack common sense.

In holland you got a consumer watch agency (consumentenbond) that does (unbiased) comparetive reviews, payed by people who subscribe to them. Pretty good BUT and honest in general as far as I know BUT one of their reviews is one big lie.

It compares the prices in supermarkets and comes with a list of supermarkets by price. You can imagine that the one who is found to be cheapest crows about this a lot.

So what is the lie?

Simple, they buy at each store a selection of standard BRANDNAME goods that an ordinary family might need, and compare the price.

This is NOT all goods a family might need in a full year and offcourse it totally ignores non-brandname goods.

Now here is the killer, the largest supermarket chain in holland (Albert Heijn) often stocks three versions of the same product: cheapo crappy brand (euroshopper) / its own label / big name brand.

The odd thing is that its own label if actually preffered by many people, for instance their peanut butter to me tastes a lot better then the brandname version (its cheapo version is truly disgusting). Yes this cheaper but better peanut butter is NOT on the shopping list.

It gets even sillier with things like sugar, a chemical product where a brandname can offer no additional value except a nicer paper bag. Yet the shopping list insists on getting the brandname product.

For yet more sillyness, a dutch consumer program Kassa, does product reviews including foods and has shown time and time again that cheapo products vs brandname products are NOT always a winner for the exensive products, a reall killer was chocolate letters a few years ago where the extremely cheap no-brand one carried by ALDI beat the established big-brands that were several times cheaper PURELY on quality. Not price vs quality, PURELY on quality.

ALDI products have won several times in these reviews, yet scores low in the price review because it doesn't carry many brandnames.

So what the fuck is your point? This is news for Nerds, not housewives! you might say.

Simple, it shows how biased any review is even when it tries to be honest. Even something as simple as deciding WHAT to review can introduce bias.

It would offcourse be unfair if the supermarket review just picked the lowest priced version of a product because that would just review price, not quality, so they go for a given quality (the exact same brand/jar-size/flavour of peanut butter) and just compare price but this ignores that this might not be the best price/quality product available.

The real truth? Well, that means that at AH you need to shop for their own brand name products and special offers, and go to Edah (the price winner) for brandname products and go to ALDI (the straight cheap price winner) for those products were quality if irrelevant (toilet paper, sugar, etc etc).

The same is true in IT, even if a review tries to be honest, you gotta ask yourselve WHAT they reviewed. One that is often missing with regards to linux is the cost of support. Not in the way most people mean it however. Say that you got a qaulity techinical team already, do you REALLY need outside support then if your own people already contribute to the kernel?

It would be like a car mechanic shop paying for car repairs on their own cars. Seems a bit silly, just maintain them yourselves.

Just because a review lists support as important doesn't mean it is important to YOU.

That is the real kicker in OS reviews, the variousses OS'es out there are totally different beasts, trying to do different things in different ways. One of the fundemental MS differences is that its servers are also a desktop. Windows 2003 can easily be converted into a XP like product capable of playing games. It leads to many a MS server being administered directly from its desktop (even if i

Re:Sadly, common sense and IT don't mix.

[Zironic]

Europshopper isn't crap, their water is the only thing I bother to drink. Their other products are also fairly decent.

Anyhow when it comes to store comparisons you have to pick a product everyone have (ie: brand). You could propably do a second round of tests where you compare each stores own product (everyone has one nowadays). It's mainly up to the consumer to test for quality anyhow since taste is very subjective.

When it comes to OS's everything is also very individual specific and I don't think there exist any "one suits all" solution (except that if you're a gamer you're only option is windows grr)

Re:Sadly, common sense and IT don't mix.

[jambox]

Dude, quality may be irrelevant for sugar, but it is NOT irrelevant for toilet paper!

You've gone and reminded me of the bog roll they used to use back at school.....ouch, my eyes are watering.

Re:Sadly, common sense and IT don't mix.

[roman_mir]

The real truth? Well, that means that at AH you need to shop for their own brand name products and special offers, and go to Edah (the price winner) for brandname products and go to ALDI (the straight cheap price winner) for those products were quality if irrelevant (toilet paper, sugar, etc etc). - Toilet paper's quality is irrelevant?!!!!

I only buy 3-pli from Dominion and nothing less will ever be good enough.

Re:Sadly, common sense and IT don't mix.

[Ghost Hedgehog]

You are forgetting that the only constant in these comparisons are the well-known Brandname goods. A consumer watch agency will not compare different types of peanut butter because you'll get "taste" differences. To compare house brands you have to compare between price and quality. When you compare only goods that are sold at any supermarket with the same brand and quantity, you only keep one different factor: the prize. So this is to only way to get a decent comparison, adding house brands will only make the comparison less creditable. But I have to agree with you on one point, house brand peanut butter (the C1000 one) tastes better then the brand one.

Windows Powershell

[Capricous]

because if you use loonix and you want to kill a process you have to use
ps xu | grep konqueror | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

Re:Windows Powershell

[physicsnick]

Or just "killall -9 konqueror"...

Re:Windows Powershell

[JoshJ]

Maybe if you use loonix you have to do it that way, but "killall konqueror" works just fine. It's the Solaris people who have difficulty with that one.

Re:Windows Powershell

[Capricous]

I was quoting from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/vid eos/windowspowershell.wvx I should have put a link in my parent post.

Re:Windows Powershell

[flyingfsck]

The nicest Loonix way:
ctrl-alt-esc, click

I really like that skull and cross-bones icon.

Re:Windows Powershell

[The Master Control P]

I disagree. First of all, it's rather rude to send SIGKILL to processes that are still responding. Second, if you're invoking AWK you might as well use it.

ps xu | awk '$11 ~ /kcalc/ { print $2 }' | xargs kill -15

C'mon, I'm sure I missed something - let's get this optimized!

Re:Windows Powershell

[Megatog615]

How are they to win me over if they use a non-free video format that I cannot even watch?

Re:Windows Powershell

[EvanED]

Ha, I love how the IE window that he's killing has Google open.

Re:Windows Powershell

[kolbusa]

Sure, just use pkill -15 kcalc

Re:Windows Powershell

[pyrrhonist]

C'mon, I'm sure I missed something - let's get this optimized!

Optimized for former Windows users:

# reboot

Re:Windows Powershell

[maglo]

I am confused. One would expect MS to want this video to show that PowerShell was easier than Linux? I think the Linux examples are much easier, if I was to use them IRL. (Except for the overly long

kill `pidof konqueror`

equivalent script of course...)

Re:Windows Powershell

[zeylisse]

ps xu | grep konqueror | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

regarding to that "| grep -v grep" thingy, here's a cool trick:
use somthing like "grep [k]onqueror" -- this command do not catches itself thanks to regexp

so, serious note aside and continuing your joke, i would modify our post this way:

s/^\(.*\)grep\s.*-v\sgrep\(.*\)|\sxargs/kill -9 `\1grep -v \[k\]onqueror\2`/

you know, i doubt there's so much konquerrors to overflow `kill`'s argument list anyway
see, there's nothing difficult in loonix

regards,
if

Re:Windows Powershell

[Anonymous Coward]

kill -9 `pgrep konqueror`

Re:Windows Powershell

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that these resources are not meant to convince you and I. When Microsoft says "Get the facts" they mean that they are providing data for people who have already made their decision to use in presentations. They need to do this because trying to find data that supports that position is about as easy as finding Saddam's nukes.

Re:Windows Powershell

[everphilski]

you. are. not. the. target. market.
get. over. yourself.

Re:Windows Powershell

[MikeBabcock]

A) get a desktop environment or window manager that includes easy one or two-click access to killing applications visually
B) at least I can list processes and kill them at all
C) at least I can process the output of lists of processes and then manipulate those lists without building bug-prone VB scripts

Try doing something like
$ find /tmp -uid 1052 -name ".ssh*" -exec rm -vf "{}" ";"
in Windows.

Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's fud site claims that the most expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux version costs $2,499 per server per year for 24/7 premium phone and web support, unlimited users, no license restrictions, unlimited software upgrades, etc.

So how about we compare that to Windows Server 2003?
- $3,999/server for the enterprise version of Windows Server 2003 R2
- have to repurchase it every ~5 years when a new version is made available
- maximum of 25 users/workstations ($40 per extra user per Windows version)
...and wait for it...
- *NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER!*

And we're not even getting into the real savings such as comparing MS SQL Server with an equivalent Red Hat offer, desktop Linux cost comparisons (including Office/Productivity applications), scaling costs up to 5000 users...etc

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running. But you have this exact same cost when using Windows Server as well! You pay Red Hat to provide support services to you - not for the actual product itself. If you go down the Microsoft path, you have to pay for the product AND the service (which Microsoft has conveniently ignored on their new fud website).

Their new website is self-damaging. If I was a potential Microsoft customer who was looking at the comparison between Linux and Windows, I'd instantly note Microsoft spreading fud and lies to make up for deficiencies in their offer. It is hardly reassuring that Microsoft is running scared at companies like Red Hat and feels the need to launch a big anti-Linux PR campaign based on lies and fud. The question I'd be asking myself is, "if Windows Server is so great, why can't Microsoft sell it to me based on features and facts?".

Re:Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to add in CALs for some of the software you'd like to run on it.

Re:Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Your cost comparison is extremely incorrect as well. From what I can tell, you can definitely get Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise for less than $3,999.. more like $2000-2500. Plus if you are planning on purchasing for a large environment, you can get a volume licensing and pay even less than that per server. Incase I am somehow mistaken, where did you come up with the $3,999/server figure?

Re:Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[Kjella]

http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.asp x?view=22&pcid=7f4a43d5-a0f2-4ee7-83f2-7caa426ecdc 5&crumb=catpage&catid=ea710cad-37b0-4975-bcd6-abfe e19961df

Order from Microsoft
Full Version

Windows Svr Ent 2003 R2 w/SP2 Win32 English CD 25 Clt
$3919.00
Item: P72-02365

I saw there were some other cheaper licenses around, but they didn't include 25 client licenses...

Re:Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[xhrit]

>Their new website is self-damaging. If I was a potential Microsoft customer who was looking at the comparison between Linux and Windows, I'd instantly note Microsoft spreading fud and lies to make up for deficiencies in their offer.

Kinda like saying "No way Chuck Norris would kick me in the head, I would just instantly note his foot and duck." Most people don't notice the FUD and lies, take it at face value, and buy into Microsoft.

Re:Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[PitaBred]

But you actually know these things. The PHB's they're pitching this site to DON'T. They PHB just writes the checks, and will see "Well, Linux costs money just like Microsoft, and Windows is what we're used to using and I know they work ok, so let's just stick with Microsoft and I'll use this site as justification. Plus, Microsoft told me Linux costs money, even though those twits in IT lied and said it was 'free'. See if they get a raise next year.". It's not a site meant for marginally technically knowledgeable people. It's meant for suits with business degrees watching the bottom line.

Re:Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[Elbowgeek]

You have hit the nail on the head: if Microsoft's product is truly better, it would be obvious. Their need to devote a whole web site to discrediting the open sauce/Linux alternative should have the opposite effect on IT decision makers: They'll start wondering if maybe there is some real benefit to Linux if MS is so scared of it.

Re:Comparison of costs is extremely incorrect

[hollywoodb]

Microsoft's fud site claims that the most expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux version costs $2,499 per server per year for 24/7 premium phone and web support, unlimited users, no license restrictions, unlimited software upgrades, etc.

So how about we compare that to Windows Server 2003?
- $3,999/server for the enterprise version of Windows Server 2003 R2
- have to repurchase it every ~5 years when a new version is made available
- maximum of 25 users/workstations ($40 per extra user per Windows version) ...and wait for it...
- *NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER!*

And we're not even getting into the real savings such as comparing MS SQL Server with an equivalent Red Hat offer, desktop Linux cost comparisons (including Office/Productivity applications), scaling costs up to 5000 users...etc

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running. But you have this exact same cost when using Windows Server as well! You pay Red Hat to provide support services to you - not for the actual product itself. If you go down the Microsoft path, you have to pay for the product AND the service (which Microsoft has conveniently ignored on their new fud website).

Their new website is self-damaging. If I was a potential Microsoft customer who was looking at the comparison between Linux and Windows, I'd instantly note Microsoft spreading fud and lies to make up for deficiencies in their offer. It is hardly reassuring that Microsoft is running scared at companies like Red Hat and feels the need to launch a big anti-Linux PR campaign based on lies and fud. The question I'd be asking myself is, "if Windows Server is so great, why can't Microsoft sell it to me based on features and facts?". And don't forget that with RHEL5, Red Hat provides support for up to four virtualized guests. RHEL5 is a supported guest. You get support for four server for the price of one. And Red Hat is very willing to work with you on price and not willing to limit client installations. If the opposite were true, we sure as hell wouldn't have seperate (virtualized) RHEL5 servers running IRC, email, subversion, etc. We have a seperate virtualized server for each individual service that we offer. And it is *very* affordable compared to the price of the hardware it runs on.

We actually used to have a Red Hat employee at our server site. Full time. Not on our payroll. Those days have passed, but their service is still top notch. They also don't bitch about our own private yum repo and are willing to work with us on getting some legacy apps working that they have never claimed to support.

huh...gimme a break

[b1ufox]

thanks for the linke whineymacfanboy :)

A little down the road you ll find

"Red Hat includes the Yum update tool to help you download packages and software updates, but doesn't address IT professionals' broader needs--managing applications and workloads, like mail and collaboration, database and business applications."

Give me a break. Is the guy who wrote this nuts?
What blatant lie.
Enough with FUD, i am going to format my windows partition at work machine too.

Re:huh...gimme a break

[gujo-odori]

No, he's not nuts. He's stupid :)

It's true that Yum doesn't do those things. Adept doesn't do those things. YAST doesn't do those things. But neither does Windows Update, which is the nearest Microsoft equivalent to Yum, Adept, and YAST. In terms of features, functionality, and ease of use, though, those three all blow Windows Update away, but I guess we won't find him mentioning that. Windows Update is agonizing to use, compared to any major update tool on Linux or Mac.

Heck, even the command line is a lot better than Windows Update. apt-get update && apt-get -f dist-upgrade and all your updates are taken care of with greater ease and less time than Windows Update requires.

Re:huh...gimme a break

[pyrrhonist]

But neither does Windows Update, which is the nearest Microsoft equivalent to Yum, Adept, and YAST.

No, that's the consumer version. The IT administrator uses Windows Software Update Services (SUS), which allows updating of an entire domain.

Re:huh...gimme a break

[Terrasque]

If I recall correctly, that is done by custom repositories in linux.
You can have one internal repository that all machines connect to, a few test machines to test all the updates, and then move it to the internal repo if it pass the testing.

Installing of new apps (in contrast to updating existing ones) could be done in a variety of ways, for example by ssh (and there is several ways to send one command to many computers), or by using a metapackage that depends on new packages as needed (something like company-tech metapackage and/or company-designer metapackage for example). Generally, very flexible.

SUS have a small advantage, I think, I havent actually used it myself, only know from what ive heard from others and seen, but the linux way is not far off (providing you standardize on one distro, of course).

Site's not too bad; typical marketing stuff

[davide marney]

From a technology standpoint, the /compare site isn't that bad. It's clearly not intended for technical people, but for business executives. It tries to put Windows in the best possible light while scaring the beeswax out of you for even thinking of trying Red Hat. The usual Marketing stuff.

The section on interoperability is somewhat humorous, in a dark sort of way, given Microsoft's reputation as the baddest of the bad when it comes to following anyone's standards but their own.

Re:Site's not too bad; typical marketing stuff

[ukatoton]

given Microsoft's reputation as the baddest of the bad when it comes to following anyone's standards but their own.

Should that not read:

when it comes to following anyone's standards including their own.

Elmer Fud

[flyingfsck]

It is a good thing the Linux mascot is a penguin and not a rabbit, or we would have had Elmer Fud singing 'Kill the Wabbit!'

Re:Elmer Fud

[_Sprocket_]

It is a good thing the Linux mascot is a penguin and not a rabbit, or we would have had Elmer Fud singing 'Kill the Wabbit!' "Be vewwy, vewwy quiet... I'm huntin' pwengins... hwaah haah haah..." [throws a chair]

Hmmm. It could still work.

Re:Elmer Fud

[Anonymous Coward]

we would have had Elmer Fud...
Or Ballmer FUD.

Re:Elmer Fud

[freyyr890]

Careful, penguins can be very lethal.

Next step....

[ingo23]

1. Get the facts
2. Compare
3. Oops!

Interoperability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft approaches interoperability by design which strives for greater 'out of the box' connectivity for customers and partners.

Interoperability only for other Microsoft products, and not even consistently. Maybe some "competitors" who pay patent royalties can get some interop too.

Interoperability by design entails not only engineering excellence in our products, but also includes collaborating with customers, partners, and competitors; providing access to our technologies through licensing and translation tools; and engaging in standards-setting activities.

They also should be more specific with regards to "standards-setting". If it was up to them, they would love to crush any long-existing, proven standard and replace it with a technically inferior closed up piece of trash that doesn't do the job half as well, just so they can increase market share, at everybody else's expense, including their own customers. Of course, Microsoft didn't put this site up so they could make themselves sound evil and monopolistic. No, that would be bad for their business and self-preservation. Who cares about the customer if they don't have a choice?

You had no reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Ford has the Mustang, Chrysler the Dodge and De Lorean has the DMC-12, so indeed, you didn't have any reason to check out the Chevy dealership.

No techie will believe this!

[ylikone]

But I guess that's the problem... techies know the truth, but they have to battle against the ignorant manager who believes the shit MS writes.

Re:No techie will believe this!

[Gazzonyx]

But I guess that's the problem... techies know the truth, but they have to battle against the ignorant manager who believes the shit MS writes. I think I might see where you're going with this... If you suggest we start writing Linux White Papers, I'll kill you. Twice.

Well

[SamP2]

Apparently telling people to "get the -facts-" has proved counterproductive for MS, so the plan B is "compare [what we tell you about us to what we tell you about them]". And unlike our last campaign, we won't let facts to get in our way this time!

Let's Compare!

[BillGatesLoveChild]

Windows: Pain in the ass activation system
Linux: Not

Windows: Media Player monitors what you are watching/listening to and logs it with Microsoft.
Linux: None

Windows: Intrusive DRM, Scarce Driver Support, Many incompatabilities, Huge Security Holes
Linux: None

Windows: Parent company breaks anti-trust laws, slap on wrist by Justice Department, continues to flaunt law without penalty
Linux: None

Windows: Threatens small competitors with a flood of patent lawsuits
Linux: None

Windows: Includes code to spy on China
Linux: None

Hey, Microsoft is right! Linux can't do anything!

Re:Let's Compare!

[robvangelder]

The poster is ignorant.
The very FUD complained about is neck-high in this thread.

1) Linux is free, why would it need anti-piracy measures?

2) Microsoft does not monitor what you're listening to, unless you choose to allow them.
Played DVDs lately?

3) The DRM is not intrusive, driver support is the widest available, Windows was built for backward compatibility and Microsoft Update / WUS is leading industry.

4) You're right

5) Small competitors would do the same, welcome to business

6) Prove they spy on China? And prove that Linux doesnt

Re:Let's Compare!

[mogey]

How can I disable the eye on China code? it uses a lot of my system resources.

Re:Let's Compare!

[Cassius Corodes]

Why would you? Its like playing black and white except you can't pick up the people. You can only do that in Vista ultimate.

Re:Let's Compare!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

1) Linux is free, why would it need anti-piracy measures? It isn't that they do or don't need 'anti-piracy measures', after all plenty of non-free software have no 'anti-piracy systems' either.
It is about the pain in the ass that 'anti-piracy measures' bring with them.

2) Microsoft does not monitor what you're listening to, unless you choose to allow them.
Played DVDs lately? Yes, VLC plays them just fine thank you. It's only in the USA where software patents mean anything (ok Japan has software patents too). The rest of the world has no legal issue with DVD playback using Free software. And do you know how terribly hard it is to get VLC in the USA? It's easier than getting official DVD software for MS Windows which costs extra. Just download it from the VLC webpage in France the same way you would download it for MS Windows.

3) The DRM is not intrusive, driver support is the widest available, Windows was built for backward compatibility and Microsoft Update / WUS is leading industry. DRM, by its very nature is intrusive, it is a restriction after all, isn't it? But DRM's intrusion even goes above and beyond that, or perhaps you missed this recent example?

Driver support being the 'widest available' is arguable. Sure, everyone and his brother targets MS windows. But once the product is end-of-lifed, the drivers don't keep up with new versions of windows. They do with linux. So plenty of old hardware won't work on vista but will work with the latest linux kernels.

As for "Microsoft Update" leading the industry? WTF? Leading them to hell perhaps? MS Update reports back all kinds of information about each system that is unnecessary. The various updaters for Ubuntu, Suse and Redhat all do the same job without the same loss of privacy.

6) Prove they spy on China? And prove that Linux doesnt Not just China, everyone. See NSAKEY. As for proving that linux doesn't, that's easy enough since anyone who cares has full access to the source code which they can then compile themselves in full confidence. The BEST MS will do is let you look at some, incomplete, source code, under very restrictive NDA licensing and they sure won't let you compile it and use the end result.

Re:Let's Compare!

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster is ignorant.
The very FUD complained about is neck-high in this thread.

1. Windows: Pain in the ass activation system
   Linux: Not
2. Linux is free, why would it need anti-piracy measures?

1. Windows: Media Player monitors what you are watching/listening to and logs it with Microsoft.
   Linux: None
2. Microsoft does not monitor what you're listening to, unless you choose to allow them.
   Played DVDs lately?

1. Windows: Intrusive DRM, Scarce Driver Support, Many incompatabilities, Huge Security Holes
   Linux: None
2. The DRM is not intrusive, driver support is the widest available, Windows was built for backward compatibility and Microsoft Update / WUS is leading industry.

1. Windows: Parent company breaks anti-trust laws, slap on wrist by Justice Department, continues to flaunt law without penalty
   Linux: None
2. You're right

1. Windows: Threatens small competitors with a flood of patent lawsuits
   Linux: None
2. Small competitors would do the same, welcome to business

1. Windows: Includes code to spy on China
   Linux: None
2. Prove they spy on China? And prove that Linux doesnt

Hey, Microsoft is right! Linux can't do anything!

Moderators, try not to step in the bullshit.

-- Moderator Management Dept.

Re:Let's Compare!

[revengebomber]

Windows: Scarce Driver Support
Linux: None No kidding.

Re:Let's Compare!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows: Huge Security Holes
Linux: None" - by BillGatesLoveChild (1046184) on Friday August 24, @12:49AM (#20340125) ONTO SECURITY, SINCE YOU MENTIONED THAT:

"Read 'em & WEEP", Linux fiends:

---

July 2007 - Operating System Vulnerability Scorecard:

http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/2007/08/ 16/july-2007-operating-system-vulnerability-scorec ard.aspx

AND THESE, whole year long, by category...?

WORKSTATION CLASS OS VULNERABILITIES:

http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/security/Window sLiveWriter/July2007OperatingSystemVulnerabilitySc or_DB33/image_5.png

SERVER CLASS OS VULNERABILITIES:

http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/security/Window sLiveWriter/July2007OperatingSystemVulnerabilitySc or_DB33/image_7.png

---

Gee, that's NOT TOO DIFFERENT from what I saw @ year start for 2006 here, now is it:

National Cyber Alert System: Cyber Security Bulletin 2005 year end/2006 start Summary:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB2005.html

---

ALL I tend to see/hear/read here @ /. is stuff like this:

"(Insert *NIX variant here) is more secure or securable than Windows

Well, ok: Put your money where your mouth is, back up your bluster, because talk is cheap - show me, show us, & backup your bluster!

Beat the score I am able to achieve on the multiplatform CIS TOOL benchmark gauge of security then... back up the bluster!

CIS TOOL uses tests based on best practices for the OS platform it runs on testing analogs each has between them & they do have them (such as state & configuration files ACL/MAC security, every OS has these for example)!

(& this test is noted as valid and good for helping you secure yourself, no less by COMPUTERWORLD & SANS (both cited here quite a bit on this site mind you, & thus, respected here)

Here is my score of 84.735/100 on it:

http://img.techpowerup.org/070618/APK14SecurityPoi ntsCISToolResult84735.jpg

In fact, when I challenged the *NIX crew here (especially asking for BSD & SeLinux kernel hook bearing security addons such as UBUNTU/KUBUNTU have no less) to this test?

HARDENING LINUX (of ALL places, lol, that happened here @ /.):

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=267599&cid= 20203061

Over 30x now, & all the LINUX PENGUINS ran, each time (bsd people too) & at a post here at slashdot called "Hardening Linux" too, lol, no less!

APK

Re:Let's Compare!

[Xybre]

As someone who 3's Windows, this isn't very comforting. The graphs show bugs *fixed*. So in other words, Microsoft fixes way less bugs than the Linux Community does.

Re:Let's Compare!

[greyphi]

6) Prove they spy on China? And prove that Linux doesnt
Not just China, everyone. See NSAKEY

---No, no, you spelt it wrong.
It's supposed to be SNAKEY

Re:Let's Compare!

[Anonymous Coward]

It appeared to me that Windows has far less bugs than Linux does based on that data posted in the images, and especially when combined with the data below those links.

What a stinking pile that site is.

[twitter]

Thanks for the link to that utterly useless page.

You are right about this being little more than FUD that M$ should be embarrassed of. If you are looking for normal metrics like cost, manhours, click counts, and other apples to apples data, you won't find it there. If those clowns had any real advantages to offer, they could make a simple chart. The page looks like it was made by a freshly minted MBA on crack. Can they do anything professionally?

No they can't. It would be easy enough for them to compare their costs with Google's published costs to make their point. The problem is that reality is not as they would like it.

Re:What a stinking pile that site is.

[jb.hl.com]

Because, of course, a comparison between Windows and Linux written by you would be entirely unbiased and would take in the merits and demerits of each equally.

Company says things about competitor to sell product; news at 11.

Re:What a stinking pile that site is.

[twitter]

One of my biggest fans, a person who hangs on every word of every post I write, gives me great credit:

Because, of course, a comparison between Windows and Linux written by you would be entirely unbiased and would take in the merits and demerits of each equally.

Well yes, it would be better and that's the scandal. I might include a metric like "freedom" along with cost, UI friction and other drier material, but even there I can make direct comparisons. The GPL does not restrict user actions, M$'s EULA often does. The GPL does not demand user data access to insure nothing violates copyright, the Windoze EULA does. I can also admit that Windoze users have an easier time getting non free video codecs and list them by name. My complaint is that M$ has not compared apples to apples, which is shocking for such a large company. M$ has studied free software for ten years, they have whole labs devoted to it and they should be able to do much better but won't. How can anyone take M$ seriously when they continue to act so unprofessionally?

An unbiased observer can only conclude that M$ is not competitive, or has not put enough effort into that silly page. Given the great amount of effort M$ has put into free software and the Vista dissaster, the conclusion tips toward M$'s inability to compete.

Re:What a stinking pile that site is.

[cp.tar]

My complaint is that M$ has not compared apples to apples,

No, they are comparing Windows to Red Hat Linux.

Any comparison with Apple is immaterial. We all know how much Microsoft has copied/stolen from Apple.

Re:What a stinking pile that site is.

[dedazo]

Because, of course, a comparison between Windows and Linux written by you would be entirely unbiased and would take in the merits and demerits of each equally.

Well yes, it would be better and that's the scandal. [...] M$... M$... M$... Windoze... M$... M$... Windoze... etc

Thanks twitter. I was having a bad morning but now that I laughed for a few minutes it's all better.

Lies, damned lies, and...

[realdodgeman]

Interoperability by design
Microsoft approaches interoperability by design which strives for greater 'out of the box' connectivity for customers and partners.

Yeah...
*cough* OOXML,MS OFFICE,VISTA,NETWORKING,THERESTOFTHEIRPRODUCTS *cough*

Re:Lies, damned lies, and...

[Dan_Bercell]

Since MS has such a large market share and such a large product base this is a valid claim. They didn't claim they work with EVERYONE. If the OSS world wants to gain a larger market share they HAVE to work with MS products, why would MS make their products with with OSS?

numbers?

[rajafarian]

... and the upshot has been erosion of MS's server market share.

got numbers? It sounds great and everything but... got some numbers for us? (I looked a little but couldn't find much).

Re:numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that he was being sarcastic. Windows Server isn't losing market share, quite the contrary.

Re:numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/02/02/febru ary_2007_web_server_survey.html

Re:numbers?

[mr_mischief]

Apache runs on Windows, too. NCSA runs on multiple platforms, too. Web server statistics don't say much about operating systems.

Re:numbers?

[VGPowerlord]

Actually, in this case it does, because IIS only runs on Windows and has been growing faster than Apache's marketshare has.

Having said that, I still think checking what domains are hosted on which webserver software is a lousy way of figuring out OS numbers, because:
1. Some domains are just parked
2. Some domains involve multiple servers using a load balancer
3. Some domains have additional servers not visible to the public Internet, such as database and back-end servers.
4. Just because something is a server doesn't automatically make it a webserver.

Re:numbers?

[tehmorph]

Apparently GoDaddy have been encouraged by Microsoft to migrate all their Apache-operated parking servers (A goodly chunk of things these days) to IIS purportedly to affect statistics such as those.

Re:numbers?

[mr_mischief]

It says something, but it still doesn't say much.

As for Apache vs. IIS showing that Windows is gaining anything, it doesn't necessarily do that. Apache, as I mentioned, runs just fine on Windows. It's quite possible a good chunk of those Apache vs. IIS numbers would be Windows either way. If some of those are conversions and not just growth patterns, some could be Apache on Windows to IIS on Windows.

Also, there are methodology questions besides those you already raised.

1. When you're looking at sites served by a particular web server, are they counting bunches of subdomains for each site that are needed because the main server doesn't scale as well?
   
2. Do they count by IP address of the web server and the domain for every server in DNS, or just by one hit to each domain? Again, servers that scale better need fewer servers for the same traffic.
   
3. Are they considering sites with more than one domain name pointing to the same site (same virtualhost, etc) as separate sites served by the platform?
   
4. Are they considering the network layout of companies that use reverse proxy configurations so that they have fewer public-facing web servers than servers actually generating pages?
   

I'm sure someone can come along and add to our combined list even more.

Re:numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just to be clear, the plan of the OSS community seeing evidence that IIS is overtaking Apache (and likely Server overtaking Linux) is not to do something about it, it is to stick their heads in the sand and say "It's not as bad as it seems".

Then, in 2010 when MSFT has >50% marketshare they'll talk about how Microsoft made backroom deals to convince people that they really would prefer faulty, inferior, expensive software to an OSS solution that works *better* and is *free* and have bitch fests to one another about why they're not "winning".

Do I understand it right, now?

Adapt or die.

Re:numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that netcraft started counting China, which is about 63% IIS with Apache in the low 20's.. Adding that load into the whole caused a huge shift towards IIS, but outside China, it's all 60% and 70% Apache.
If you remove the Chinese figures, IIS is on a downhill slide.

Re:numbers?

[mr_mischief]

That's some extraordinarily flawed reasoning.

I do not mandate planning for "the OSS community". I do not represent or speak for "the OSS community". I'm one person.

I never said it's necessarily better than it seems from those numbers. I only said it's not clearly as bad as some are trying to say those numbers mean. There's a big difference.

I'm not sticking my head in the sand, and I never suggested anyone else does.

If your incitement represents your understanding, then no, you do not "understand it right [sic]".

I don't have to adapt to anything. I'm not an Apache developer nor a Linux developer. I don't market nor sell those two projects. I do perform and contract to perform services which utilize those packages, but IIS gaining some market share does not diminish my ability to do so. Only if Linux and Apache go away (actually, only if Apache went away, as most of my stuff runs just as well on Solaris, BSD, and yes, even Windows) completely does it matter materially to my business. Both Apache and IIS growing at the expense of other web servers and in response to general growth of the market is not a sign of Apache going away.

While some in the OSS world do have an "us vs. them", "winner takes all", and/or "only my choice" mentality, that's far from the whole "OSS community", if such a broad label really carries much meaning at all. My favorite quick-snippet descriptions for OSS are "only the best craftsmen invite inspection" and "quit pissing in my pool".

OSS gives me a chance to see what I'm running and possibly fix it. In those cases I don't have the time or the skill to fix something, it at least gives me the chance to listen to the advice of skilled people who have access to the source. Many of them will fix things and share the fixes. I don't like putting crappy software on my systems that make diagnosing problem hard and fixing them harder or impossible. Messes do hide in Open Source software, but not for as long nor as easily as in closed source software. Locksmiths, doctors, auto engineers / mechanics, security experts, research scientists, mathematicians, and more publish what they've accomplished for review and use by others. Why shouldn't computer scientists, software designers, and programmers?

If I find closed-source software that's stable, does what I need it to do, and is flexible enough to keep doing what I need it to do, then I have no problem with paying a fair price for it and letting the developers keep it closed. It upsets me that so many companies expect hundreds or thousands of dollars from customers for buggy, unstable, insecure, inflexible messes that don't ever get fixed. If someone wants their software on my system, they won't let their software devalue my investment in my systems. The software should always add value, or otherwise why did I pay for it? That's what I mean by pissing in my pool. Some closed-source vendors don't do that, but too many do. OSS projects might suck, but if I'm not paying for the program then it's no loss to replace it with something else. If I'm paying for support, earlier access to new features, or something like that, those are things I'm choosing to buy. The source code that almost does something right even has inherent value over that of a closed binary that does the same thing. The developer or vendor of that Open Source code is being better to me and treating my systems with more respect than the closed-source vendor.

Open Source is sometimes considered a political movement. I think it's really more of a philosophical one. There's more than one way to make a buck in software development. There are probably fewer ways to really make significant progress in software development. Peer review and public comment seem to help quite a bit, and that's what's more important to most people than RMS's statements or any of the other manifestos.

No big deal

[steveoc]

If you care to dive into the article, download and read the .doc format 'case studies', you will see there is nothing much to crow about.

If you are looking for hard empirical stats on a real comparison of Linux vs Windows, then these case studies are not for you. If you are looking for fuzzy feel-good buzzword-laden coffee table anecdotes, then its worth the download.

In the comparison cases presented, the reasoning is basically as follows :

"I went out with a Blonde once, and she was cool, except she had no job, and was stuck at home with 3 noisy kids - so we rarely got out together. Then I met this independent Brunette chick with a rich Dad and no ties, and we had a ball together. Therefore, based on my extensive experience with such a broad variety of women, I must conclude that in 100% of cases Brunettes make better girlfriends than Blondes'.

SwissAir's initial problem was that their existing Java/Oracle web site was less than optimal, and the code mixed presentation with business logic at all levels of the spaghetti triangle. So they went for a ground-up rebuild using their newly aquirred experience in how not to build a system. The operating systems hosting the bad-build / good-build of their web site are not even relevant to the study, but they happen to be Linux the first time around, and Windows the second time around.

Its a good article if you are interested in the subject of system development lifecycles .. but its hard to build a case for operating systems around it. You could just as easily say that the original Java/Oracle first cut (which ran on HP proliants) was replaced with a .NET rebuild (running on Dell), and therefore Dell is a better choice than HP.

The State of Illinois story is no better. Their initial problem is an aging hulk of a Groupwise messaging system running on Novell Netware. They chose to go to an unspecified line of Microsoft products, the prime deciding motivation being 'Because of Microsoft's position in the market'. The IT director even goes so far as to admit that 'We are not a science outfit - we just need something to get the job done', and they forgot to edit out the comment that 'For us, security was not a driving issue'. In other words, here is an organisation that is flat out doing whatever it does, and it just wants to outsource all of it's IT problems to a big outside company, and get on with the business of .. whatever it is that it does. Linux doesnt even come into the discussion - they never used it at all, so its hardly even a comparison. Very lame choice of stories to include in the 'Comparison' site I would have thought.

Re:No big deal

[Almahtar]

If you are looking for hard empirical stats on a real comparison of Linux vs Windows, then these case studies are not for you.

SAY IT AINT SO!

Re:No big deal

[Dan_Bercell]

Anyway, Novell wasn't the source of the "desktop productivity solution" when I did desktop support for them. They ran Groupwise (which does email and calendars) at DHS. They also ran Office and in some cases also WordPerfect Suite. They ran Crystal Reports when needed. There is, or was anyway, an entire subdepartment of DHS that handles creating, modifying, warehousing, and distributing paper forms. Those people had additional software for that. There were mainframes in the Harris building (the main DHS office center on South Main St. East) and many users had terminal emulation packages to access that. In no way did they switch everything from Novell to Microsoft on the desktop.

With the exception of Crystal Reports, a %100 Microsoft solution could replace all their software packages making it cheaper in the long run. Why on earth would a company have GroupWise, Office, and WordPerfect. That is 3 expensive software packages when all they need is 1 of them that will do all they could do before, not to mention it's easier to support 1 product then 3.

Re:No big deal

[lordtoran]

If you are looking for hard empirical stats on a real comparison of Linux vs Windows, then these case studies are not for you. Who needs a biased case study with this extremely detailed comparison of the Linux and Windows kernel available?

MOD PARENT UP INSIGHTFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Yes. Yes. Couldn't've put it bett'r m's'lf!

The REAL facts

[Cyko_01]

if you want to get the facts from people who know what they are talking about then check wikipedia. this is the ONLY way to get unbiased results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Windows _and_Linux

Re:The REAL facts

[petrus4]

*Experiences sudden violent fit of coughing*

Yes...because as we all know, Wikipedia is a source of information that is totally neutral, unbiased, and objective, and is not subject to any form of inappropriate manipulation or interference whatsoever.

Their policy says so.

Re:The REAL facts

[cheros]

You mean, until MS changes it?

Re:The REAL facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes...because as we all know, Wikipedia is a source of information that is totally neutral, unbiased, and objective, and is not subject to any form of inappropriate manipulation or interference whatsoever.

[citation needed]

Re:The REAL facts

[o'reor]

I would have happily added a few more mod points but you were already at +5, funny.

Oh and btw, I checked out the discussion tab on that Wikipedia page and it says :

This article was previously nominated for deletion.

Hmmm, this article must really be relevant and full of insight... :-)

Re:The REAL facts

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS THE SAME JOKE THE OP MADE, YOU FUCKING RETARD

holy shit are you really that dense

I mean, the dude made this joke already, and you're sitting there thinking "man it would be funny if I posted ironically about wikipedia's neutrality!"

what a faggot

Re:The REAL facts

[VGPowerlord]

Their policy says so.

*clickety click click click*

Not any more it doesn't!

Re:The REAL facts

[Goldberg's Pants]

LOL! Post of the year!

No you messed it up.

[Almahtar]

3. supposed to be "???" and 4. is supposed to be "profit!". Remember, this is /.

What I don't understand is...

[Jugalator]

Why would anyone go to Microsoft for opinions on things like Windows Server 2003? Why? They can't possibly list any scenario with major disadvantages, because they sell the OS. Sure, it's not easy to find decent third party sources (you can obviously not ask on Linux-oriented sites either), but I'm pretty sure that the effort would be worth it.

Re:What I don't understand is...

[someone1234]

You can always go to 'independent' sites, which are in fact funded by Microsoft.
Microsoft just supplies the PR material so they could link in or use the M$ stuff as a template.

And the #1 Reason ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... why Microsoft is phasing out its "Get The Facts" website:

They got tired of people calling them to ask where all the facts are after reading through the site!

it's not advertisement o_O

[ilithiiri]

I'd suggest you check the video for power shell:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/vid eos/windowspowershell.wvx

Any reason why this video is on the Microsoft website? It basically shows that things in Linux can be done with a couple piped commands.. and on Windows they require WMI scripting..
True, under Linux you use ps, grep, awk and kill to kill a process... but on windows everything else from adding a user to a group to preventing a service to be run at startup requires a fair amount of WMI scripting..

Again, wasn't this supposed to be PRO-microsoft?

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[Daengbo]

The only place it lookes like power shell won was in killing a process, but it could've been much more easily accomplished with a single command, killall konquorer. Why he did all the grepping, awking, and piping, I don't know.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[Random_Goblin]

I'd suggest you check the video for power shell:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/vid eos/windowspowershell.wvx
Any reason why this video is on the Microsoft website?

You've made a parsing error that's not windows power shell, but Windows Powers Hell, its an advert showing how one of their big clients has seen huge rises in productivity since they shifted the demons from Gentoo to Windows ME

obviously for this particular client increased productivity == increased suffering, but i understand a lot of companies use the same metric...

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[Anonymous Coward]

It basically shows that things in Linux can be done with a couple piped commands.. and on Windows they require WMI scripting..
True, under Linux you use ps, grep, awk and kill to kill a process... but on windows everything else from adding a user to a group to preventing a service to be run at startup requires a fair amount of WMI scripting.. If you want to do all of that *from a script*. In the 99% case you'll use the UI to do that (e.g. to kill a process you press ctrl-shift-escape and use task manager). It's all easy to do.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[rtb61]

Now come on, that is pretty obvious even to you. Have you never hired a windrone system admin, well ok perhaps you might not have, those guys have absolutely no idea what is going on, I don't know exactly what MSCE apart from somebody having forked over a decent chunk of change to M$ for a bit of paper either directly or indirectly.

Besides what else would you expect from an M$ Windows system, the highest performing feature would be software that kills out of control crashing processes, because you can bet you bottom dollar that that (P)OS will be continually generating out of control crashing processes.

I have employed both windows admins and Linux admins and to be brutally honest the windows admins peformed as poorly as the software they were looking after, perhaps I should't be too harsh on them, after all working with windows is like getting stuck with a handicap.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[Soothh]

You know what this video shows... even MS uses vmware over their own virtualisation product.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[VGPowerlord]

I thought the demons used BSD before Windows ME.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[SiChemist]

Not to mention the several aliases that he set up under windows to help himself out. He could have done the same thing under Linux and cut down his typing even more.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[paulatz]

The only place it lookes like power shell won was in killing a process, but it could've been much more easily accomplished with a single command, killall konquorer. Why he did all the grepping, awking, and piping, I don't know.

That is just plain trash: nobody use such a stupid commanline to kill konqueror (why do they use xarg for so little line? why do they grep away grep? it's gone anyway). Furthermore the command "pkill -9 konqueror" would have just the same effect.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[nuzak]

Maybe the idea is to show how you could write your own killall, such as to find processes owned by a particular user or with more than X amount of CPU. On Windows, with the sysinternals PSTools, I can use pskill. Jeezub, that isn't the point.

And having to grep and awk output is a kludge that WMI/PSH scripting doesn't have to do. Sure it's fine if you want to do trivial things, but there's a reason people reach for perl in the end, and that has a lousy interactive shell, to say nothing of the syntax.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[Arterion]

He only used WMI in that demo for the very last example, which was to disable a service. There's also a command line tool to do it. Just type sc at the command prompt and see for yourself. In Windows, there's usually a command line way to do things (legacy) and a robust way to do things (WSH/WMI). I almost always opt to write a little perl script to hit WMI when I have the option to do it either way. I also tend to use a FileSystemObject to manipulate files, instead of a command line script. You just have so much more control over what happens. I don't see that as a bad thing at all. If anything, I think it's a testament to how great WMI is.

Don't get me wrong. Linux is better at all things command line. But I think the comparison most people make isn't fair, because they don't know just what all you can do from the windows command line, or with a little WSH script in your favorite language. The difference is that every decent *nix admin knows the command line like the back of his hand. The same is, unfortunately, not true of windows admins.

Re:it's not advertisement o_O

[Allador]

I have employed both windows admins and Linux admins and to be brutally honest the windows admins peformed as poorly as the software they were looking after At the risk of sounding troll-ish ...

Have you ever considered hiring good windows admins, rather than bad ones?

You distinguish the good ones the same way you do on other OS's. Do they understand the underlying fundamentals, do they choose to leverage automation rather than poke & click or manually doing things, do they use scripting and programming to solve most non-trivial tasks, etc.

yes, this is a spelling flame

[Lazy Jones]

It's written its Anti-Linux campaign (not "it's"). By not proofreading even the abstracts of your stories, you are adversely affecting the spelling abilities of your readers, leading to more badly written submissions ...

Re:yes, this is a spelling flame

[Pitr]

Um... sorry, you're wrong.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_a post.html

To save anyone having to follow the link, I will reveal the principle and relevant use of the word:

1) to form possessives of nouns Microsoft is the noun, the campaign belongs to it, hence "it's Anti-Linux Campaign" is the correct spelling.

The use of the apostrophe is not limited to the following:

2) to show the omission of letters
3) to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters.

Re:yes, this is a spelling flame

[Lazy Jones]

Um... sorry, you're wrong. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_a post.html To save anyone having to follow the link, I will reveal the principle and relevant use of the word: 1) to form possessives of nouns Microsoft is the noun, the campaign belongs to it, hence "it's Anti-Linux Campaign" is the correct spelling.

No offense, but that's bullshit. "it" is not a noun, therefore the quoted use of the apostrophe is not valid. "it's" is short for "it is", "its" is the correct possessive form.

http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/its.html

Re:yes, this is a spelling flame

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not even bother to read the pages you link to?

Don't use apostrophes for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals.

Apostrophes should not be used with possessive pronouns because possessive pronouns already show possession -- they don't need an apostrophe. His, her, its, my, yours, ours are all possessive pronouns. Here are some examples:

wrong: his' book
correct: his book

wrong: The group made it's decision.
correct: The group made its decision.

(Note: Its and it's are not the same thing. It's is a contraction for "it is" and its is a possesive pronoun meaning "belonging to it." It's raining out= it is raining out. A simple way to remember this rule is the fact that you don't use an apostrophe for the possesives his or hers, so don't do it with its!)

Re:yes, this is a spelling flame

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are stupid as fuck.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/its

its
the possessive form of it (used as an attributive adjective): The book has lost its jacket. I'm sorry about its being so late.

it's
1. contraction of it is: It's starting to rain.
2. contraction of it has: It's been a long time.

You are a fucking moron. Not for being wrong, but for arguing when other people have taken the time out of their day to show you that you're wrong, proved it, and you still fight them for incorrectness. I hope you drown in your sleep in your own saliva, curmudgeon.

Re:yes, this is a spelling flame

[Rudisaurus]

From the very link you so kindly included in your post:

Don't use apostrophes for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals.

Apostrophes should not be used with possessive pronouns because possessive pronouns already show possession -- they don't need an apostrophe. His, her, its, my, yours, ours are all possessive pronouns.

QED

Gaming the system

[Anonymous Coward]

These things DO pop up very early in most threads critical of Microsoft.

It's called gaming the system. MS would disappear with out its legions of marketeers and astroturfers.

State of Illnois study bullshit

[mr_mischief]

The State of Illinois case study is bullshit. I worked as a contractor for the Department of Human Services in Springfield for a year just a few years back. My wife's stepdad worked for Department of Public Aid as a contractor for years. He's now DPA staff because the AFSCME union strongarmed the state into getting rid of knowledgeable contractors and giving the work to state employees. They couldn't do it with state employees, so he became one to continue doing his old job for additional pay plus benefits. There's a budget solution for you...

The company I worked for also had contracts with Corrections, Courts, State Police, Public Aid, and some other state agencies, so I sometimes went to locations for those as well.

Anyway, Novell wasn't the source of the "desktop productivity solution" when I did desktop support for them. They ran Groupwise (which does email and calendars) at DHS. They also ran Office and in some cases also WordPerfect Suite. They ran Crystal Reports when needed. There is, or was anyway, an entire subdepartment of DHS that handles creating, modifying, warehousing, and distributing paper forms. Those people had additional software for that. There were mainframes in the Harris building (the main DHS office center on South Main St. East) and many users had terminal emulation packages to access that. In no way did they switch everything from Novell to Microsoft on the desktop.

The servers were NT 4, Novell 4 and 5, some NT 3.5, some commercial Unix on Alpha (although that was mostly being replaced with Win2k), and the IBM mainframe stuff. There were contractors running the actual servers in every case. Most of them worked for the same company I did.

CMS is an agency that's supposed to consolidate resources across the state for the other agencies to improve security, decrease waste, and "improve" accountability (although that has never seemed an appropriate goal for the convicted Republican George Ryan nor the current governor Democrat Rod Blagojevich either one). We had to have our badges for DHS buildings issued through CMS, for example. When there was a network outage, DHS had to bother CMS to bother the phone companies. Real efficient and cost effective, that.

The State Police had Avid equipment and such for reconstructing accidents. I'm sure Microsoft Windows Movie Maker hasn't entirely displaced that. They might have replaced some of the serial dumb terminals in the maximum security prisons with Windows PCs, but I'm not sure you'd want something with lots of little voids and such in with the inmates. The schools for the visually impaired and for the deaf already ran Windows PCs for students and teachers, as did the developmental and mental health centers (all part of DHS). The department of the courts had Windows PCs. The local Office of Rehabilitative Services (part of DHS) offices had Windows and OS/2 PCs, and sometimes were not even on the statewide Novell networks for DHS. DCFS (part of DHS) had Windows PCs.

Other than replacing Groupwise server and client with Exchange and Outlook and upgrading the desktops to newer versions of Windows (which was always being done anyway, as any PC more than 3 or 4 years old goes to CMS auction to the public), I'm not sure what they've really done for DHS. They've traded Novell's superior print server, client management (ZenWorks/snapshots anyone?), firewall (Bordermanager worked well), years of employee training, and working with certified consultants familiar with the old network all for Windows printer sharing, Windows remote client management (if they're doing that at all), probably going to Cisco's firewall solutions as Microsoft's suck, having to retrain their workforce, and having to find new contractors (or hire more unionized employees away from consulting companies).

All this is from a state that can't pay Medicaid on time and has run pharmacies out of business. It's a state that uses taxpayer money to pay government employees to campaign for their elected bosses. The federal government is very concer

Or, to summarise...

[trawg]

...comment sense isn't.

cat abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Com'on! there is not even cat abuse in your example ....

You're not the target market

[jimicus]

The target market is, and always has been, the sort of IT manager who bases their decisions on what they read in magazines and sales literature.

Many commercial software products, you buy them (often for a surprisingly low price) but you HAVE to get support and that's expensive. But you have someone to call if things go wrong - and if you're lucky, they're somewhat more intelligent than the telephone handset they're speaking into.

The perception amongst such management is that the same is true of Windows. You're paying for it, therefore you get support. Microsoft are fully aware that this is the perception and they milk it for all it's worth - even though more or less everyone who actually works on the coal face knows that this is complete twaddle.

As long as Windows works well enough that anything that is likely to go wrong can be fixed in a reasonable timescale without having to beg Microsoft to crank out a patch because you've encountered a genuine bug which is a showstopper for you, this will continue.

MOD PARENT UP

[Kawahee]

It's true ;)

redhat is somewhat guilty too

[petermgreen]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running.
but afaict redhat tries to hide the fact this option exists. Afaict they make the projects rebuild from source and strip out all the identity of the OS. They also make them replace the update mechanism but that is a fairly minor point.

it seems like redhat thinks the money they can make by getting people to buy support they don't need is worth giving the likes of MS ammo for thier FUD campaigns.

Re:redhat is somewhat guilty too

[ozmanjusri]

Afaict they make the projects rebuild from source and strip out all the identity of the OS.

Why the negative spin?

"Red Hat [is] required to protect its trademarks. But they were quite friendly and polite and they went as far as to confirm that they had no objection to our product. We were more than happy to reword our advert," Setchell said. Red Hat has always been a strong contributor to open source projects, and does not deserve that sort of FUD.

Re:redhat is somewhat guilty too

[petermgreen]

redhat used to make thier main distro free and sell support for it if you wanted it.

Then they basically told people that they had to either pay up for RHEL (and have the support whether they wanted it or not) or go for the at the time very unstable fedora.

The rebuild projects turned up later as a reaction to this and since redhat release everything of importance as open source there wasn't much they could do about them other than getting them to remove references to redhat to make it less likely people would find them.

Red Hat has always been a strong contributor to open source projects
being a strong contributor to open source and trying to convince people that they have to buy support they don't want or need are not mutually exclusive.

and does not deserve that sort of FUD
It's not FUD

Re:redhat is somewhat guilty too

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the reasons Red Hat does not let other people use the "Red Hat" name and trademark for other products (free or otherwise):

  * Microsoft could make their own fake "Red Hat" branded distribution and fraudulently use this deliberately damaged product to convince potential customers that Windows Server is a better choice
  * Red Hat does not want to answer questions and provide support for people using alternatives such as CentOS (which is outside of Red Hat's control)
  * Red Hat needs to keep a good brand image in order to sell their product and maintain their reputation in the industry - faults that plague only alternative Red Hat branded products should not hurt the image of the real Red Hat products
  * Scammers could make a fake backdoored version of the Red Hat distribution and sell it using the trademarks (like they used to do with Kazaa software)
  * Allowing others to use your name would create mass confusion with online documentation, marketing, assistance on forums, etc

Ask yourself if you'd let any random stranger use and sign your name on your behalf? Your other identity could end up in prison and future employers would avoid your resume automatically because of what someone else has done with your name.

Arr, I need windows to run critical applications

[earthforce_1]

Like the windows only internet monitoring software the US government makes me use!
Sorry, Linux doesn't cut it...

In the Business world

[Dan_Bercell]

The OS itself doesnt mean much, all the additional software that is available / works with the OS is what makes you decide which road to travel.

Sure I could install some random Linux distro on a clients network, however when they start asking for solutions I will be screwed.

Re:In the Business world

[Anonymous Coward]

it it was a "sohlushin" like you claim, they wouldn't need a computer in the first place!

some choice 'facts' ..

[rs232]

"You can build it, design it, and it will work great. The trouble begins when you want to add things to it, add some services and things like that. Because of the brittle nature of the platform, when you do that, other things break", Martin Taylor July 2005

"A number of studies by IDC and Gartner have proved our platform has a lower TCO than open source because there are no hidden costs."

'[Nick Barley] refuted allegations that MS security was lax, saying .. "We've spent a lot of time recently trying to educate the marketplace"', June 2004

"The study found that enterprises using Microsoft's .NET/Windows platform to build and support custom applications incur 25% to 28% less cost than those using J2EE/Linux platform during a four-year lifecycle", May 2004

Re:some choice 'facts' ..

[Anonymous Coward]

"A number of studies by IDC and Gartner have proved our platform has a lower TCO than open source because there are no hidden costs."

Holy crap! They said that? They actually said that!? AFAICT, that is a legally actionable statement. It explicitely states that there is a cost item (such as "retraining") that is considered "hidden" AND that there are no costs of that type associated with Windows. If they can't identify any "hidden" costs then they've lied and if any of those "hidden" costs apply to Windows then they've lied. Unless, of course, they can show that they have completely and accurately disclosed all costs (both known and unknown).

A question of perspective....

[Churla]

So MS switched names on the marketing program meant to tout it's capabilities over Linux. Seeing the vitriol being spewed in here I have to wonder, which side is really more hateful of the other here? The answer I get looking in here is not one which makes Linux look any more noble, simply less corporate.

Many of the things you rail against MS for are things MS has in the technology because corporations have asked for it (DRM for example), so flaming them for it, is flaming large corporate America, and isn't that who we're trying to woo over here? In many cases MS can win battles for corporate usage because on a very basic level they cater to corporations and most of the OS community has some level of contempt for one or more levels of "the man", meaning they will push against many things on personal or philosophical beliefs. The instant you tell a corporation they can't have what they want because you don't think it's ethically right, and someone else is willing to tell them they can have it, guess who wins?

And IMHO the largest hurdle still facing Linux is not a technical fact at all, it's the "what people already know how to use" fact of office existence. That can only change slowly and over time as more people grow up and go through school using non MS products. Unfortunately what many Linux supporters want is some kind of show down where they end up standing victorious over the bleeding corpses of Gates, Balmer, and Co. That isn't ever going to happen. At the best what will happen is that if Linux is really better, over time people and businesses will gradually move to using it more, and MS less. This is a war of attrition, and if this battle ever is "decided" it will end with a wimper, not a bang. The problem is that's not "cool" or "sexy" enough for many on either side.

Yeah, I'm already wearing my gel coated inferno suit, and yes it's got karma taped on the outside I'm willing to let burn in the ensuing flamefest simply to know I made the point I felt needed to be made.

Re:A question of perspective....

[spitzak]

Excellent job at confusing server and desktop. This is all about servers, Microsoft is not attacking Linux on the desktop because they see it (perhaps correctly) as an insiginificantly tiny threat. For servers, "familiarity" and "applications" tend to favor Linux/Unix somewhat. Microsoft's arguments are more that it is easier to run Windows servers or that it somehow costs less, and also the truthful fact that their servers integrate better with their desktops (which is it assummed everybody uses).

In addition I very much suspect that companies installing servers do not want DRM. At best they don't care, but saying they requested it is really stupid.

Too bad, because you are obviously intelligent and worked hard on this post. But you do have to be careful to not make whoppers of mistakes like this.

Because when people did get the facts...

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually switched to Linux!

its time for a Full Bore Shootout

[RobertLTux]

Get a d6 and a large group of Amish farmers (where the number is NX6) divide them into 6 groups at random then give them a Computer , Network connection and a Geek
(just to be fair lets use a single network type and a group of dell cheapo boxes) the Groups

1 Windows XP Pro (with all current patches but NO THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE i will give a Push for MSO)
2 Windows Vista Ultimate (same setup)
3 Redhat WS (whichever is the current with all patches only direct Redhat repos)
4 SUSE SLED 10.1? (same setup )
5 Mandriva 2007.1 free (same setup no PLF)
6 Ubuntu 7.04 (same setup)

Then have them do some actual work /play/ (and install software as needed) see exactly how far they get before the farmer decides to Shun the computer and the geek.

Who would win and who would end up with a Hoe divot on the side of the case??

Consider the Source

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have ever had a beef against MS products, lost .doc file, crashed during making a presentation, or the blue screen of death then then last people you should listen to are the Lawyers and Marketing people behind Microsoft. They have the money to say and make whatever they want look good/bad.

Instead of making excuses, people will decide over time. Every pissed off MS user is another convert in the wings.

Redhat is not guilty

[tjwhaynes]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running.

but afaict redhat tries to hide the fact this option exists. Afaict they make the projects rebuild from source and strip out all the identity of the OS. They also make them replace the update mechanism but that is a fairly minor point.

RedHat(TM) is a trademarked name. That is the reason that the CentOS folks must remove the RedHat trademark from the SRPMS before redistributing them. Everything that RedHat has released is GPL or LGPL-licensed - if they were concerned about hiding the source code, that would be a particularly bizarre choice! RedHat can not continue to use the RedHat trademark if they do not protect its use, such being the requirements of trademark law.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Win 2K > 9x > WfW 3.11 >>&

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, WfW 3.11 was always more stable than Windows ME, given the same hardware. The only exception might be with RAM > 512 MB, which is where 3.11 / 95 / 98 start having problems. But with that much RAM, I am going to run something NT-based anyway (and some form of Linux along with it.)

Damn, fell for a troll

[spitzak]

That was stupid of me to reply to this. It's obviously a troll. The companies asked for DRM? That should have been an obvious hint.

Please mod him and my responses all down as troll and get rid of it.

Can't believe I fell for it. What an idiot. Have not had any coffee yet, that's my excuse...

Re:Out with the anti-MS FUD

[lordtoran]

Ballmer? Still posting as AC? Get an account finally.

Ben Lauri quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison includes the quote: "Although it's still often used as an argument, it seems quite clear to me that the "many eyes" argument, when applied to security, is not true." -- Ben Laurie, Director of Security, Apache Foundation It's from "Open Source and Security" in "Open Sources 2.0" published by O'Reilly so you can read the full book online at Safari if you have a subscription. The next section after "Many Eyes" in the chapter is "Open versus Closed Source"! Here are some quotes from his actual analysis later in the chapter: "The idea that vulnerabilities are found by looking at the source is an attractive one, but is not really borne out by what we see in the real world." "Another important aspect to security is the ability to assess the risks. With closed source, this can be done only on the basis of history and reputation, but with open source, it is possible to go and look for yourself. Although you are not likely to find bugs this way, as I stated earlier, you can get a good idea about the quality of the code, the way it has been written, and how careful the author is about security." This is his real point with the quote Microsoft (mis)used.

Last week I saved $250.00....

[TW Atwater]

....by using Windows XP. I got a virus and was able to clean it in only 5 hours. If I had been running Linux, I would have had to hire a Linux expert at $50.00 an hour to clean the virus for me.

God damn...

[DavidR1991]

Bloody hell, I wish they would stop comparing their corny little OS to a kernel on its own....

My theory

[Mateo_LeFou]

They axed "Get the Fucts" because they kept getting black eyes from biased research that bordered on fraudulent advertising.

From Comes v. Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not kidding. Take a look at this internal document taken from Comes v. Microsoft:

Evangelism is War

They are just being silly

[HermMunster]

Enough said. Microsoft is just being silly. In the long term they cannot compete. I do find it quite amazing that Linux on the desktop doubled in the past year. I would expect even greater growth now that the nasty DRM nightmare called Vista is out and is showing its true colors. 47 programs that spy on you, WGA/WGN accusing you of stealing and then searching your home (your computer is an extension of your home after all). With performance issues relating to the implementation of the hardware requirements dictated to the hardware manufacturers, etc.

I think this is just a silly mess that Microsoft has created for itself. They forgot one important thing. Serve the customer. You don't go violating everyone privacy because you want a few extra billion dollars--billions more than the billions you already have. Just pathetic. They have markets greater than you can imagine in the world and they are violating our privacy, invading our homes, manipulating the police authorities into stupid raids on xbox modchip makers. Just pathetic.

Now they are saying they like open source but it must be Microsoft Windows only code? That's not open source. And then they have the gall to try to win a comparison war? I think FOSS wins, hands down.

Name Change

[PPH]

So, did their lawyers tell them to get the word 'facts' out of the name?

How many IT managers actually use this info?

[zerofoo]

I'm assuming most of the slashdot crowd is involved in IT somehow - supporting it, implementing it, or managing it. How many people in IT would actually make a platform decision based on a marketing web site?

I've been in IT for 15 years, and my answer to that question is NO ONE! I've sat on IT steering committee meetings for a bunch of companies and platform choices were NEVER made based on marketing web sites. Platform choices (99% of the time) are driven by application vendors.

Microsoft has a bigger problem. They don't really know how or why their customers buy products. Microsoft could quit marketing every product they make tomorrow and it would not affect their sales at all.

It seems that Microsoft's management can't find their butts with both hands these days.

-ted

Re:Out with the anti-MS FUD.

[Arterion]

No wonder teh Lunix will never be ready for the desktop. Or prime time.

What do you know. If you believe that about Linux, it just might have something in common with Vista after all.

Grammar, etc.

[Shifuimam]

"has axed it's Anti-Linux campaign"

Grammatical errors FTW. It should be "its" since it's possessive and not a contraction of "it" and "is".

Powershell is great! (not)

[Tired and Emotional]

Loved the comparison of doing some simple admin tasks with powershell vesus Linux.

First up he shows us how to kill a task using a fairly techy combination of grep for the name, remove the grep task, pick up field 2 with awk, and then kill it. (although I don't think his command is correct but it disappears to quick to be sure)

Then he shows us how to do it using a script he has hacked together on powershell. Surprise - the script on powershell is simpler than typing the full implementation under Linux.

So then he shows how to add a user to a group. This time, on unix he uses addgroup (although he fails to remake his yellow pages database!) while on powershell, he shows a multi-line script he had to write to do the same thing - then he calls the script, which already has the user name hard coded, and comments on how easy that was!

The surprising thing is not that the demo is wrong, or even biased, but that it is so transparently lame! And he still had to type his slashes the wrong way round!

For the gazillionth time...

[Anonymous Coward]

The subject may be misleading, but, as many others have pointed out, MS has some good stuff and it has some not so good stuff,...

Learn from the bad,... don't do it,... or things like it.

Learn from the good,... do better.

Don't bother telling them what they're doing wrong. Let them try to figure it out.

In the mean time, help the folks that are using Linux (and other honestly FOSS products) do their jobs better, by writing/engineering/... the software to help them do what they're trying to do. We're supposed to be making each others' jobs a little easier. It's more important to give **serious** and **constructive** criticism of the software you prefer than blather on about another person's blathering. [am i being a tad hypocritical? ooops, sorry? ]

Sure, it's fun/cathartic to go to a ballgame and scream your lungs out,... but that's for the weekend,... hmmm,... oh, yeah, it is the weekend.

Have a good one whatever you do.