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Linux Gaining Strength In Downturn
gubm writes "A February survey of IT managers by IDC indicated that hard times are accelerating the adoption of Linux. The open source operating system will emerge from the recession in a stronger data center position than before, concluded an IDC white paper."
I find it morbidly funny somehow that companies have to experience poverty themselves before they see the same benefits of Open Source as some third world countries have already been aware of for years.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
A survey of 330 IT Managers makes for questionable results as, although it doesn't state the sampling method, it suggests 'these are just the people who could be bothered to reply to surveys we sent out' rather than going for a representative sampling.
It's headline grabber is from a flawed type of question : "do you plan to...". The trouble is "I you plan to..." isn't the same as "there are currently plans drawn up to...". You're essentially getting a non-commital 'yeah probably' response.
It's also linking two unrelated questions: "are you planning on increasing linux usage?" and "are you cutting your budget". Whilst their may possibly be links between the two in some cases, it would be a logical fallacy to assume that companies are switching to linux because of budget cuts.
That one might think that the very same recession that increases interest in Linux might well put many of the leading vendors out of business.
Novell's operating margin and profit margins are both negative, according to e-trade. Sun Microsystems looks to be in big trouble, as usual.
But, on the other hand, Red Hat did well last year, so I guess Linux fans should keep their fingers crossed as their earnings are due on the 25th of March. Oracle is also doing ok and their earnings are due out the 18th.
IBM is totally kicking ass right now, EPS wise.
So... you could lose Sun Microsystems and maybe Novell, but you would still have Oracle, Red Hat and IBM to fund OSS development, and, of course, Google.
This is my sig.
Sounds good? No, the real answer is that the lower costs will end up in the CEO's bonus checks while they continually farm out the admin work to third world countries. After all, Linux being free and all, third world countries can educate those folks for very little money and therefore, flood the market with really cheap tech workers.
We, in the developed World will be cursing the existence of Linux and the rest of F/OSS one day - mark my words.
Actually, this kind of thing is somewhat rampant already. I recently worked on an embedded Linux system, and the developers moved to Linux from Windows. It certainly proved that Linux is flexible. You absolutely can run a Linux system in such a way that it totally defeats the purpose.
Their "build system" required you to log in as root or it wouldn't build. To my complete lack of surprise there were flaws in the script that hosed the build machine when run, since the process was running as root. Luckily I was smart enough to run it in a VM, since their is no way I'm building anything as root on my machine. Had I not known any better my system would be messed up, and I would have no idea why.
The new question to determine if someone is really skilled with computers will not be "do you use Windows or Linux" (or some other secure OS). The litmus test which served me so well is rapidly becoming invalid. It used to be Windows + Education + a_clue = Linux. The new formula will be Linux + Education + a_clue = Real Linux Guy. Basically, the Linux Guy wannabee pool is in the process of growing exponentially.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The average user, the average sysadmin and the average developer won't fundamentally change. No matter how they told you in grade school that you can become anything you put your mind do, there's people who can't grok a computer if they'd get Bill's fortune as the prize. Some, for some incomprehensible reason even choose to become sysadmins.
The only real options are that Linux will adapt to gain wide adoption or it will not have wide adoption. It should be in the cards that if you talk to people that want shiny buttons about the freedom to hack the code and compile your own kernel, you're barking up the wrong tree.
Why should you be complaining anyway? If 90% became point-and-click Linux admins, who'd he the gurus they'd have to go to when those tools fail them? That's right, you. No longer would you be the sysadmin of some obscure server OS, you'd be the grossly overpaid technical specialist hired it to fix the hard stuff. Oh, what a horrible tradgedy.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Those of us who were involved, even peripherally, in metal bashing in Europe during the 90s may remember "Herr funfzehn prozent" - the guy from Opel who would guarantee you a supply contract if you could undercut his present supplier by 15% on price, which included warranty and quality costs. One German company found a way to make fuel injector casings by deforming metal rather than by cutting, resulting in a 50% cost saving. I don't recall anybody saying "What a pity Opel decided to use a cheaper identical product rather than a more expensive one". What they said was "Great, we have a long term contract, a patent and an unassailable technical lead."
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I have recently been writing about what I call the "new frugality." With an estimated 40% of the world's (fake and inflated) wealth gone in the last year, it is finally becoming obvious to many more people, companies, and government that all expenditures need to be judged on value (preferably long term).
Unfortunately for me, virtually all of my recent consulting work has been taking open source projects, making a few customizations or enhancements, and designing a good deployment strategy. On one hand, this is not good because my revenues are down and I enjoy from-scratch development work. On the other hand, this is good because the profitability of my customers makes my future revenue streams more stable.
Linux, web platforms + frameworks, etc. all make IT more relevant because they increase the value to cost ratio.
I strongly disagree. The high cost and abysmal quality of IT services put a wet blanket on innovation and creativity. Without open source software, the cost of starting up an IT company would be significantly higher; without open source Google, Slashdot, reddit, digg and a thousand other companies would likely not have existed.
I'm excited to see what cool innovations people will come up with if IT costs are further reduced to nearly nothing.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
This week a relative gave a desktop running Ubuntu to his kids following a recommendation by a computer store owner "ubuntu is best for kids". Yes! This after having a bunch of worm infested unusable windows & vista laptops lying around his home for months! Shows linux has reached a level where it is very much usable by regular folks.
If my corporation buys services from global player say HP for instance and this in turn gives away whatever flavour linux they currently support then how this is going to cause money staying locally? I mean HP service desks are all over the place and their HQ is thousands KMs away so the money is flowing around or away but not staying?
Whether windows actually dies is another matter. I think this will not happen or not very soon anyway. All predictions about fast adoption of linux because of it being cheaper have not come true partially because corporate service boys charged a healthy premiums on their linux 'loving' customers. I had problems with that myself too - I had to justify to my box why I wanted to use more expensive product and it was linux that was more expensive than vista installation. The price tags have been set by our IT service support company. If I could install linux box myself of course this would be cheaper but than again maybe against corporate policy too.
OC when it comes to small business that is able to make decision and switch within days of making it then this OS switch actually may happen. Alas not everywhere and for everybody.
which is good - we need no mono-culture.
I've been using linux for 14 years now and for most of that time it just has not been quite ready for the masses. The Ubuntu team has made gigantic leaps in making the OS easily configurable and consistent, while the OpenOffice people have provided software which makes it compatible with formats which are necessary for business use. Sure there are still some quirks here and there, but in my opinion they are no harder to deal with than any of the commercial operating systems.
The economic downturn might have something to do with it, but it's only one reason why we're seeing it adopted more.
Well, the idea that I withheld is similar to that, but implementing an offset to the costs to industry.
Basically, (remember, I KNOW this is nearly impossible to implement) my idea is to automate every job possible. Fire every single person you can. Now, here's the key, instead of giving everyone unemployment checks, you make "student" a paying job (and "teacher" a WELL paying job). Yep, start sending those university checks in the other direction. You'd still have a massive tax burden for industry, but they would be getting a pay-off in access to the largest and most talented pool of prospective employees ever imagined. Hell, we could even build more universities than prisons then.
There are flaws, and the changes required are nigh impossible due to our societal momentum, but it would be nice. Not as nice as unicorns that shoot laserbeams out of their horns, but hey, I prefer slightly more realistic fantasies. :-)
All predictions about fast adoption of linux because of it being cheaper have not come true partially because corporate service boys charged a healthy premiums on their linux 'loving' customers.
Oh, I dunno about that. A few months ago, I ordered the hardware for a new "desktop" system from a local computer assembler, and since I ordered it without the default Vista OS, I got a discount of a few hundred $$$. While talking about it with a rep over the phone just before delivery, he asked what I intended to install on it. I said "The latest Ubuntu release", and he said "We can install that for you, for no extra charge." I said "Huh?", and he said "Yeah; we've found that Ubuntu always installs quickly, with no problems at all. Give us an hour, and we can have it all set up for your." I told him "OK", and I got it with Ubuntu running just fine.
(Well, OK, there was a problem: They forgot to tell me the password that it wanted when I booted it. They were very apologetic about that. They were even more apologetic when I told them that, since they were closed when I got it home, I'd booted a handy knoppix briefly to mount the root partition and set the root password to something I knew. ;-)
I do sorta suspect that they wanted to do it as a training exercise for their installer guys, as a response to a good number of customers wanting that system installed. But no matter; the fact is that a local system builder took the attitude that "The customer is always right", and wanted their people to be able to install whatever the customer wanted.
Anyway, this one company didn't charge a healthy premium on a linux-loving customer. They said "We can do that for you for no extra charge." And, needless to say, I told a number of other local friends about it, probably resulting in a few more sales.
YMMV, of course.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.