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Microsoft Confirms October 22 Release Date For Windows 7
techwrench was one of several readers to send word that Microsoft has officially announced Windows 7 will be generally available on October 22nd. They also mentioned the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program:
"This program enables participating retailers and OEMs to offer a special deal to upgrade to Windows 7 for customers purchasing a qualifying PC. I'll be doing another blog post about this program with a date and more details when we get closer to availability. Obviously, Release To Manufacturing (RTM) is an important milestone on the path to GA. We anticipate that we'll be able to make the RTM code for Windows 7 available to our partners sometime in the 2nd half of July. We also expect to be able to make RTM code for Windows Server 2008 R2 available to our partners in this time frame as well."
Maybe my time stalling the windows xp to vista migration is drawing to a close.
...for Creative Labs to get on the ball and release 64bit audio drivers for the X-Fi series that don't cause constant crackling and odd behavior. I swear, past their XP drivers, the drivers for Vista and Win7 are horrid. Least I got a USB headset that works well. The rest of my Win7 RC test machine works wonderfully though, save for the sound, which is driving me insane.
Does anyone else have this issue? Am I insane? Will Dudley Do-Right save Nell Fenwick?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
No. But, how could we have organized MS-bashing without these Windows stories?
No, we are all pig headed fan boys like you
A bunch of idiots saying "Vista SP3 out soon!" even though Windows 7 has tons of new features. It will happen, you know it. Ignorance has no limits.
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
"'We won't be actually selling [Windows 7] a day before the 23rd October"
That statement could not possibly be more precisely wrong, as it turns out. They will actually be selling Windows 7 a day before the 23rd of October.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
Before people pounce on him like the lynchmob this website is, it's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows. It's almost always the PHB or CEO who has been sold on it because he went to a big conference and they had a Windows 7 booth that gave him a free light up pen. I want to move to Linux in the company I work for, but people in the various departments will always drag their feet and be resistant to it.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
ummmm... yes.
Until all of the games I run on Windows work on Linux I won't be installing it on my desktop.
Laptop, yes. Other computers hanging around the house freeloading on my electric bill, yes.
But L4D, WoW, CoH, DoW2, Il-2:1946, ArmA, soon ArmA2, plus probably a few others will all need to run reasonably well on Linux for me to move that system over. Some, like WoW, do. Others, not so much.
And frankly, $100 for an OEM copy of Home Premium won't kill my wallet. It's more than I want to pay for the content delivery mechanism for my games. I keep in touch with several college friends and so forth socializing on ventrilo or teamspeak while blowing crap up, and it's a fun time. No, I am not willing to give it up.
while I don't personally use it for daily work. I do have to support users who do use windows. So in the end, yes I care. Until the day I can get Linux accepted I'm stuck supporting windows networks. I also do Linux server support and OSX client support so it's not all bad.
It's almost always the PHB or CEO who has been sold on it because he went to a big conference and they had a Windows 7 booth that gave him a free light up pen.
That gives me an idea. We should set up a Linux light-up pen giveaway program. The pens will come disassembled in the package, and there will be no instructions on how to put it together. Oh, and the package will include the wrong size batteries. We can also include a little fold-up card that says "Open and read only as a last resort" on the outside. And when they finally give in and open the card, it will say "Figure it out yourself, noob! It's only a pen!" That's a surefire way of giving PHBs and other management the "true" Linux experience. : p
This guy's the limit!
I tend to agree.
But XP is nearly 8 years old now. Yes I understand that if a software isn't broken, then don't fix it approach. (look how long windows 3.1 lasted) But the fact remains that there is software coming out that has built in native support for newer hardware types and can better take advantage of what the hardware has to offer. XP has 3 service packs that increase the ability for the operating system to fully take advantage of current hardware. Even still, XP64 doesn't fully scale to fully utilize more than a 2 core processor.
I am not advocating that windows 7 will be all glory and shine. But I am merely expressing that as a whole the XP platform is becoming dated and should be replaced to better support emergent hardware.
Before you start going off and saying "With Linux you don't ever see this" Wrong. When XP was released in 2001, the linux market was comprised of Redhat, Debian and Suse. From then, in 2004 Ubuntu was released. Ubuntu was a great leap in consumer level linux desktop enviroments. I would like to see people running the original Ubuntu 4.10 with only hot fixes.
The thing I am getting at, is that no matter how much you hot fix a operating system. After some time the underlying core will have to be rebuilt.
Yes, lots of people on this website care about Windows 7. Just because you don't doesn't mean no one else does. You're not that important :)
The desktop. Windows currently has about 90% of that market.
The desktop market. The computer illiterate market. The market most IT people have to deal with at work. The market that gets viruses, etc. Basically, if I interact with people with computers in a non-programming environment you will probably have to use/fix Windows.
It doesn't matter that someone uses Firefox whenever they corrupted a DLL you have to re-install.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
There are a few of us fortunate to work in Mac shops. :)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
That's a surefire way of giving PHBs and other management the "true" Linux experience. : p
That, my friend, is what consultants are there for.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
"Is there anyone on this website who cares a whit about Windows 7?"
/Raises hand/ That would be me. I want a stable 64-bit OS so I can run AutoCad with more than 3.5 GB of usable RAM. Our IT people intend to skip Vista so, yes, the advent of Windows 7 is indeed of interest to me.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
[citation needed]
Touché.
This guy's the limit!
Plus they have a lot more of the server market than the 20% that the OP seems to be crediting them for.
Before people pounce on him like the lynchmob this website is, it's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows.
I work in IT and like to stay on Windows. I use Windows at work and with my lab at home for both workstations and servers. There have been times that I have used Linux for certain play projects, but honestly at the end of the day I end up going back to Windows. The only Linux/BSD variant I'm currently running is Monowall for my firewall. The last time I ran Linux as my primary workstation is when I played Quake and Team Fortress, and connected to the Internet through Netcom and my 28.8kbps modem :) I feel that I am a true IT geek too. I love working with computers, no matter what platform it is running. I love working with routers, firewalls, switches (I have a CCNA).
Maybe one can say that I'm not a real IT person, or that people like me are not that common, but the truth is there are a lot of people in IT who prefer staying with Windows.
But...but...how soon can I d/l a full cracked ultimate 7 build from isoHunt? Just....asking, of course.
My desktop runs Vista SP2, my cellphone runs Windows Mobile 6.1.
I do care about Windows 7.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
True, but I am getting better at it every day.
I don't want to move to linux on the desktop for the ordinary users. With the range and amount of crappy software (designed for windows 98!) that their managers insist they MUST have that is windows only and doesn't have a linux analog, I can live without the grief of desktop virtualization.
Add to that the many staff than can't handle when an option moves two places down in a menu on office, or how to fix the 'problem' that I've already shown them how to fix three times this week, I'd spend my entire day just helping them find their way round firefox (yes, we have firefox on our windows pcs. No, they don't use it because they 'know the internet', and the big e IS the internet)
Windows sucks, but supporting it sucks less than trying to deal with staff who don't gain anything from training, even if we had the money or time to pay for it. And active directory might suck, but it sucks less than trying to get the equivalent functionality with openldap, and my linux servers still tie in to it nicely.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
(I have a CCNA)
I do too, and I have karma to burn so I am going to say this joke:
How do you get a CCNA off your porch? Pay for your pizza.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
and the big e IS the internet)
On my Dad's computer the only way I got him to use Firefox was by deleting all icons to IE. The only way to run it at this point was by Start>Run iexplore.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
90% of WHAT market? 80% of server installs are BSD/Linux.
Maybe where YOU work, but not in the real world...
A day that will live... in INFAMY!!
Seriously, expect wholesale user screeching of "Hey, my (fill in the blank) stopped working properly after I upgraded! What gives?" will start shortly thereafter.
Wan can't you use XP 64bit?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm probably going to wait for Win7 SP before putting it on my main machine.
... to discover that?
10/22 = 10 2 2 ... Maybe a subliminal message?
substract 1 to each number: 9 1 1
yeah... should stop working and go back home.
Don't forget to include the pre-assembled time machine in the package, since you obviously want to provide the "true" Linux experience from circa 1998.
I run Kubuntu. I consider other distros, I consider Gnome, I consider getting a Mac, I'll consider Windows 7 too. I did switch to Linux because of Vista but it's not like I've seen the light and would never ever use anything else ever again. It works, it has warts, if other companies are better at fixing their warts eventually I'll switch away again. Overly optimistic? No, but XP followed Windows ME, Intel Core's followed Pentium IV, in short I'm not ruling out the possibility that Microsoft learned a lot last generation.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
On Bittorrent and cracked well before it's released.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
at least I know when the next Black Thursday is.
I use Vista with 8 cores and 8 GB of RAM, and it runs like a gem. Perhaps your IT people should stop reading /. and actually try the technologies they refuse to run. Of course, I'm sure someone here will simply point out that you need to have such a beefy machine in order to run Vista. Oh look, a cliff for us to jump off!
You are thinking SERVER SALES... I'm quoting INSTALLS. Alot of servers that are sold with Windows on it get it removed to get BSD or another flavor of Linux installed; BSD/Debian/Slackware are not options from Dell after all and yet they are still within the top ten of server installs.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
They used LTSP and tftp to boot the image off the server, essentially making the desktops terminals.
If I were setting up an office, that would be the way I would go. Everything is centralized and easily backed up.
It is an office environment, after all. The users probably complained the first month, then got over it and did their work.
We explored Linux as a database server solution last year. We are not running Windows servers now (all AIX), but we still stayed away from Linux because of the lack of enterprise support. Initially the price looked really good, but then we added the cost of buying enterprise support from the few that actually provide it and the cost skyrocketed well beyond the cost of software and support for AIX.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Bit's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows.
If one works for a tiny company that doesn't use much software than firefox, or really basic programs, and don't interact with people or businesses outside of their domain, I'd agree. In the real world, a good IT person would realize there's room for both products within the company and in most cases it wouldn't be a great idea to switch everyone's computer to linux. There's nothing wrong with Windows when it does the job that's requested of it. Sure there's problems with it but there's software issues with linux also. At the same time, there's places for windows and saying linux needs to replace the computers in a company is just as ignorant as the company that demands windows only.
That was Spazztastic!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
You said, "In essence, from our testing it's doing pretty well."
I'm very skeptical. Our October 22, 2011 adoption date may be delayed. Let everyone else have the hassles, as they did with Vista and Windows ME, and several versions of DOS. Bringing out unfinished versions has been very profitable for Microsoft.
Windows XP had very serious, but not obvious, problems until SP2.
Windows 7 is just another version of Windows NT, but Microsoft calls it an entirely new operating system, and most people accept that.
Every new version of Windows has some features that require a lot more computing power. That is because, apparently, the hardware manufacturers are Microsoft's true customers, and they want everyone to be required to buy new hardware.
Some people have been claiming that "critical updates" to Windows XP have caused it to be slower. What has been your experience?
To quote something, you'd have to have a source. You didn't quote anything. As far as I can tell, you just pulled some numbers out of thin air.
Yes servers are SOLD with Windows installed giving them the numbers. Sales can be backed up by number when leaving a place. Installs are only backed up by peoples words. I say this cause I 80% of my job is knowing what is running in my company and show those figures to the people on the boards everything has to be in black and white for those people. Gives me a headache.
You are thinking SERVER SALES... I'm quoting INSTALLS. Alot of servers that are sold with Windows on it get it removed to get BSD or another flavor of Linux installed
I call BS. All the major vendors offer servers without an OS. Who is going to pay the MS Server license cost if they're knowingly going to put something else on it? This argument might hold some water with desktop sales, but in no way does this apply to servers.
Quit pulling numbers out of your ass.
The only inherent benefit GNU/Linux has is it's Freedom. And I use it for that Freedom, it is the one distinguishing quality between it and competitors.
I strongly recommend reading Free Software, Free Society (PDF) before you consider switching to a proprietary system.
Active Directory is way easier to manage than all other directories solutions out there. Windows 7, and even Xp boots faster. I use Linux since the 98, and it's great for some things, not for others. /opt is not synonym for C:\Program Files).
One of the most amazing things I find are places where the sysadmins are too dumb to setup a LDAP server, and setup the linux boxes to authenticate against. Most linux only shops are a fucking nightmare, because most people don't know that Linux have ACLs, don't know how to authenticate users in a desktop against something, have no idea whatsoever of where they should fuck install things (tip:
Sad to say, but are these ignorants who have no idea of the architectural differences between diferent OSes, who can't figure out the difference, who spare files on directories based on dates, because they don't know that ext3 have direcory entry hashes, who don't even understand what is a kernel switch, Exactly those ignorants are the ones the first to bash Windows.
Of course, there are the ignorants knowledgeable on Linux, who cannot figure out the difference between Win32 and MFC who jump at the same wagon.
And worse, there are the ignorants who thinks that Mac OS X is an awesome OS when they don't even manage to have a true 64 bits kernel, nowadays, where having 8 and 16GB is unbelievably cheap.
I run Windows 7 on my desktop, have a macbook , a home server with FreeBSD and Linux under ESXi and use ubuntu on my work desktop, along with an older power mac G5.
All Oses suck in one or other way. But Windows 7 have been giving me a consistently good experience.
OS will be a distant memory in about 5 years. The Applications that people develop need a huge overhaul. Apps other than Graphic/CAD apps don't use multicores or 64bit fully as it is supposed to be done.The areas that the OS can improve on is bootup. I know there are things out there now that help with bootup, but I should turn on a windows PC from cold and the OS should be ready in less than 10 seconds. That is what should be enhanced by MS. Other things should be jailed or built-into an app. With virtualization, hardware is meaningless so thusly is the OS.
Servers unlike desktops don't generally get sold with an OS unless you request one.
Oh. of course. People buy a 25K machine and pay a premium of some other Ks for a Windows OS, when they are going to install FreeBSD or Linux. And they do it while all major vendor offer one or more flavors of linux pre-installed on Servers. Of course, you can't have slackware (because it's fucking a dead end, moron), or debian... and about FreeBSD, you can't have support from it, because there's not a market big enough of people wanting to pay for that support.
But, ok, you want FreeBSD on your 25K server? Just order it without an OS pre-installed. You can buy server grade machines without OS.
But, it all depends on what you call a server.
And it all depends on where you number of Server INSTALL came from.
Microsoft has officially announced Windows 7 will be generally available on October 22nd
Boy, I think that was the loudest collective yawn I've heard in years!
#DeleteChrome
XP-x64 is really Windows Server 2003 with the XP appearance tacked on top. It's a fine OS, but it's also an orphaned child that's often left aside. It was cooked up as a temporary stop-gap until Vista64, and it served its stopgap purpose.
Drivers are non-existent for some pieces of hardware. Pretty much any hardware needs to have XP and Vista drivers, but XP-x64 isn't actually XP (it requires 64-bit drivers), so the drivers aren't necessarily a drop-in replacement. With the release of Vista-64 as Microsoft's 64-bit desktop OS, XP-x64 is also a complete dead-end in the driver department; new hardware comes out, and since Vista64 and Windows Server 2008 already exist, there's not as much reason for companies to bother with driver support for XP-x64. It's not worth the testing or support resources necessary for an OS that only ever commanded a tiny fraction of the market. On top of that, plenty of install applications fail because they check for XP or Vista but not XP-x64; even though the program will run, it can't be installed without some irritating workarounds.
On top of that, his IT department may be unwilling to dedicate the resources necessary to maintaining one or a few workstations with a totally different OS and image than the rest of the systems. You may argue that it's IT's job to do that, but they also need to weigh costs and benefits; perhaps they've already determined that the hardware or critical software isn't supported under XP-x64, or perhaps they're about to migrate to Win7 and it simply isn't worth the extra cost and hassle until they start migrating people in 9 months.
you know you can go out and buy light up pen's with anything printed on them.
get some "linux" pens and other marketing crap made up. drop them on the brain-dead CTO and even rewrite some of the MSFT FUD campaign materials to target Microsoft with linux as the savior.
Oh and throw out every copy of Information Week that arrives. That useless RAG does more damage to IT than anything else.... well maybe CIO magazine, that one is typically nothing but damage as well.
I always find that the dragging of feet is based on legacy apps that will not run under Linux. Sun's VirtualBox solves that issue, or run them on a Terminal server. Worked here.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You should be fired. Seriously. It's dumb fucks like you who answer support calls without knowing jack shit what they are talking about and giving people idiotic answers. Typical support worker mentality. "I work on supporting it, my bread food rent comes from it, but no no, I don't even use it so I don't really know it.".
Damn fool! You should be fired.
And it will finally be time to argue definitively how fast and slick Windows 7 is. I'm tired of people saying "Windows 7 is great!" when it isn't even out yet.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Before people pounce on him like the lynchmob this website is, it's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows. It's almost always the PHB or CEO who has been sold on it because he went to a big conference and they had a Windows 7 booth that gave him a free light up pen. I want to move to Linux in the company I work for, but people in the various departments will always drag their feet and be resistant to it.
All of which is well and good, but have you actually analysed business needs lately? Most businesses have all sorts of boring admin needs which nobody writing free software would be even remotely likely to find interesting - and nobody writing commercial software could justify the man-hours for the return.
I can give you a few cases in hand:
I defy you to find me a payroll and accounts package suitable for the small business which runs on Linux. There exist legacy systems which only need a terminal emulator to use - but they're unusual these days unless they're something which was bought years ago.
There exist web applications which you can run on your own systems (which as often as not require SQL Server and Windows Server on the backend anyhow) but these tend to be geared up for huge businesses.
But a simple basic desktop app which deals with these things under Linux - no such thing.
OK, how about management? Yes I know Active Directory is fundamentally LDAP at its core and you can authenticate a Linux system against LDAP quite easily. But OpenLDAP is an example of the worst of open source - not only is it about 12 years behind the likes of Active Directory, anyone pointing out missing features is generally pointed to papers that someone has written which basically say "Even though every other directory product out there implements feature X with some degree of success, it's a fundamentally bad idea because of problem Y and so it won't be going into OpenLDAP". (Yes, some bugger's actually gone out and written a white paper saying exactly that when discussing multi-master replication. A similar answer is given when anyone asks about server-side sorting of results).
Even when you get over the backend issues, Active Directory can be so much more than just a user account repository. Granted, more-or-less anything you can do in AD you can somehow do in Linux but you have to reinvent the wheel because guess what? Nobody's put together a half-competent framework which deals with the management side and doesn't require you to spend a fortnight just figuring out how to get started with it.
and the big e IS the internet)
On my Dad's computer the only way I got him to use Firefox was by deleting all icons to IE. The only way to run it at this point was by Start>Run iexplore.
I don't understand. Was your dad unhappy with Internet Explorer? Why were you forcing one option on him over another. I don't care what technology it is, I make sure I give the user what they want. I biggest pet peeve is when an "IT" guy will come in and change someones desktop to meet the "IT" guy's need and not the users.
When it's the 22nd in United States, it's already the 23rd in Europe.
and the big e IS the internet)
On my Dad's computer the only way I got him to use Firefox was by deleting all icons to IE. The only way to run it at this point was by Start>Run iexplore.
I don't understand. Was your dad unhappy with Internet Explorer? Why were you forcing one option on him over another. I don't care what technology it is, I make sure I give the user what they want. I biggest pet peeve is when an "IT" guy will come in and change someones desktop to meet the "IT" guy's need and not the users.
This was before IE8 came out. Firefox 3 + Adblock+, along with the immunuzed system from Spybot will save me the trouble of having to clean his computer of virus' and spyware every few months.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Those that do still get reported and confused for installs. So when people quote Windows server numbers, they are usually quoting sales figures and not actual install numbers. That is the point I am making.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
saddly that is what it has turned into..
i didn't even bother renewing my CCNA 6-8 years ago..
while the NP's are still worth it and the IE is still a simi exclusive club..
Certs can only get you so far..
honestly i think these cram and coaching classes for certs should be banned
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I expect to see Windows 7 on Vista's Windows update by the end of October!
Once Vista64 is set up, it's Effing fast!
I've never been happier w/ a computer. I can alt-tab between multiple 3d apps in seconds! You know hardcore apps like UT3, WoW, and TF2!
8')
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Ever hear of a little company called Novell? eDirectory does everything you've considered.
As for spending a fortnight figuring out how to get started... well, frankly, if you're setting up any kind of directory service, you SHOULD be spending a good amount of time figuring things out. That kind of thing shouldn't be setup or administered by anyone but an administrator, familiar with the entire network infrastructure.
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
Yeah. It feels like driving a Ferrari. It's difficult not to care about the other cars when they constitute 90% of the traffic.
Dude, seriously, nobody buys a server with an OS installed unless that's the OS they want to run on it. They either have their own corporate image for servers, or will install it with their volume license. It's not like desktop Windows where the cost of the OS license is absorbed into the cost of the PC, getting any non-free server OS installed costs enough that it's broken out as a separate item.
I install windows:
Have to install raid drivers - reboot
Have to install various MB drivers - reboot
Have to install audio drivers -reboot
Have to install video drivers - reboot
Have to close out of (3?) wizards to get to the desktop and online
I install linux: done and online
*DrugCheese rants*
XP x64 drivers are hard to come by for a lot of hardware; most OEMs didn't bother with the OS, and while Vista can load most XP drivers, the reverse is not true (typically, the OS, not the driver, is backward-compatible).
Technically it's the same kernel as Server 2003, so if that works on your hardware (in x64) then XP x64 will too. That isn't something you can count on for a desktop machine, though.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Thanks for one of the best posts I have seen on here. I was using an early version of Linux in 1993 or so, and I still get frustrated with all of the simple things it will not do, and the crappy things it does.
no comment
The time spent figuring out how to organize things and the time spent figuring out how to work around deficiencies in the tools are not at all the same thing. Your reply is extremely disingenuous, although I expect that from people who automatically discount solutions from Microsoft based on nothing more than prejudice.
You should have been able to change the icon for the Firefox desktop icon to the "IE" logo as well.
We have several hundred clients that think this is suitable...
http://www.osas.com/
Runs on Windows, MAC, Linux, Unix, highly customizable, etc. Has issues, but what software package does not?
Until all my games run on Windows, I wont be switching to it. It's surprising just how few games actually do have Windows ports since I can't find Same Gnome, Shiesen or even tux racer. What's this world coming to?
It's almost always the PHB or CEO who has been sold on it because he went to a big conference and they had a Windows 7 booth that gave him a free light up pen.
That gives me an idea. We should set up a Linux light-up pen giveaway program. The pens will come disassembled in the package, and there will be no instructions on how to put it together. Oh, and the package will include the wrong size batteries. We can also include a little fold-up card that says "Open and read only as a last resort" on the outside. And when they finally give in and open the card, it will say "Figure it out yourself, noob! It's only a pen!" That's a surefire way of giving PHBs and other management the "true" Linux experience. : p
put a EULA on the wrapper that says opening the wrapper means they are accepting the EULA.. then inside have a card with the EULA that explains they agree to be raped by rabid Apple fanboys.
Nope, haven't discounted anything from Microsoft. My point was that there ARE other solutions, even commercial, out there. Whether you think they are deficient or not probably shows that you haven't even bothered to look at the alternatives.
You seem to be missing what is being said and helping to prove my point at the same time. People who do purchasing are often not the same people doing the maintenance and will often replace Windows installs. And as you pointed out, servers do not always come with OS's. Bu people who report high Windows numbers on servers vs Linux are usually reporting SALES numbers (Windows server sales vs Redhat server sales) which means nothing because when you actually look at the number of server installs of Linux/BSD, they far outnumber Windows.
That was my original point and still is.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Linux is an excellent OS, but in the end, people need to choose the tool that is the best for the job. AIX is an excellent OS and you can do stuff with it (LPARs, VIO) that is hard to do on other operating systems. AIX also runs on high end hardware. Finally, depending on application, you can get a one stop shop from IBM, where you can get an IBM CE on site to fix something regardless if its the hardware, the OS, or the application. Service like this is highly important when a company is depending on the hardware 24/7/365, and downtime means bankruptcy.
Devil's advocate time. Linux has one liability for a lot of companies: Yes, the OS is free, but consultants are not. If a company has a lot of UNIX people, this isn't an issue. However, if a company does not have the experience in house, the cost for consultants to plan, deploy, maintain, update, patch, and upgrade may far outweigh the license costs for Windows.
October 22 is the anniversary of the Great Disappointment of 1844. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment
In police radio code, a 10-22 means to disregard the last assignment. Microsoft wants me to disregard Vista? Roger that.
Say hello to my little sig.
They have their place. They suck for employers and current cert holders because they dilute the market and it make it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. On the other hand, they are really useful for people who are in the middle of their career and suddenly find out that they need some certifications. In my case, I have been employed for the last thirteen years and never unemployed. In the course of my career I have worked in Novell Netware, Microsoft and Linux servers. I also have some rudimentary experience with Cisco IOS (enough to configure an interface, create a config file, etc). I'm currently looking for a job, and despite over a decade of experience, and being currently employed, I don't have any certs. The lack of certs is really killing me in the market.
I only have to wait 5 months for an amazing new operating system filled with new bugs... I mean FEATURES. I can't wait!
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
If an IT department is savvy enough to be installing Linux on their servers, then why the hell are they purchasing Microsoft licenses that they don't need? I work for an organization that runs Windows Server. We buy HP Proliant hardware. Every server box that we buy from HP comes as a bare metal box that we then load Windows onto. We also have a Proliant running Ubuntu for the web guys to do their dev work on. That came into the building as a bare metal box also.
Where are you getting the numbers to back up your statement that server installs of Linux/BSD far outnumber Windows? If one side is quoting "sales figures", what figures are you quoting? If you're talking about data centers, I'm sure that there are more *nix boxes than Windows boxes. On the other hand, if you're talking small and medium sized businesses (50-500 employees) with in house IT, I think you're going to see significantly more Windows installs.
Ok, that's kinda funny! Here's your +1, my good AC! I'm with the GP: I only play a few games, but none of them will work well in Linux. I've even grown sick of trying to get WoW to run in wine (granted, I tried on my old laptop with a 945GM chipset, which was notorious for linux incompatibility). I'd like to learn to set up a complete linux shop, but our engineers need AutoCAD software that I doubt would work in linux. Even if it did, we don't have the know-how in the company to set up all our customizations for it in anything but Windows. I'm excited for Windows 7. I hope our company migrates to it soon. XP is started to feel really dated.
Wrong. In most cases, especially with a newer releases like Windows 7 and Vista, many drivers will already be installed or not require a reboot on install. You do not need to reboot after ever single driver install. You can install the drivers you need, then do one reboot. You do not have to recompile your kernel and you will get higher performance from your hardware with authentic drivers.
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
for the legacy windows only apps you use something like virtualbox.
transitioning away from MS can't be done overnight. First get people used to using software like Firefox and Open office. This means a lot of training. Don't just install it and say "use it noob". They will be resistant to that attitude. Do a nice training session showing off some features that aren't available (or they at least aren't aware of) in IE, MS office, etc. The carrot works a lot better than the stick.
Once people get used Openoffice and FF well then linux isn't so scary. Yeah stuff is different, but the apps they use the most are still the same so they can adapt. Once again do some more training, show off some cool things you can do with linux.
Also roll out slowly. Work closely with the few people that you're rolling out to and make sure everything works for them. Find ways to make their jobs easier... if they could have done the same things under windows, don't tell them that haha. Pretty soon the other employees will be jealous that they don't get to use "that system that doesn't get screwed up all the time" and start asking when they're gonna get it. Having a nice shiny theme with the compiz 3d effects reinforces the idea that this is the "new" system. People like "new" things.
Always keep virtualbox there running their old OS so they aren't losing everything. After a while they'll find it tedious to always be switching over to windows to do stuff they can just as easily do in linux. You don't want people to think of linux as that system "I can't do my stuff on". Make sure you work closely with the users and have a lot of training. You see them switching to virtualbox to use notepad? Show them that "Text Editor" can do the same thing plus a lot of other stuff. Put a shortcut to it on the panel so they can find it easily too. They'll be happy because now they can use something pretty and new and its a lot easier to get to.
Some legacy apps aren't going to be able to do anything about. But you just want to minimize the use of windows, not eliminate it. Plus if you only have five or six apps you need windows for, you can maintain a standard virtualbox image for those and (depending on licensing) copy that image to everyone's system. If you have a problem, just delete the image and copy over a new one.
You've never worked in mixed shops before apparently. You've also never worked in shops where people have changed architectures EVER. You also apparentl;y only work for small mom and pops where purchasing is done by the same guy who does administration and nothing ever changes hands. Must be nice to work in such a small shop with a heterogenous environment. The rest of the world envies you.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
4 years ago that would be right- today it would be an (LINUX) Live Light Up-Pen and you could fully boot and install linux from it without configuring anything outside a GUI. : P
_-_-_GSLUG_-_-_
I've never worked in huge enterprises that is for sure. My experience has been in medium sized organizations with budgets between $1-100 million a year. At the top end of the scale, the people doing the purchasing aren't the people doing the administration. No matter what the size of the organization, if the people in charge of purchasing are purchasing licenses they don't need, and spending money they don't need to be spending, then they are incompetent. Are you telling me that people putting Linux on servers in corporate environments are by and large incompetent, and that incompetence is leading them to purchase Windows Server licenses that they don't need, and that those license counts are causing inaccuracies in the metrics?
What qualifies as a "mixed" shop? Netware and Windows? Windows and Linux, with some OSX thrown in? Maybe some VoIP hardware in the mix? In this day and age, are there any shops out there that AREN'T mixed?