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How To Save $1 Trillion a Year With Open Source
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Cygnus founder Michael Tiemann estimates IT customers globally could save a trillion a year with open source or free source software." Not that a guy with a title like "VP of Open Source Affairs" at Red Hat would have a reason to be biased, but it's an interesting little read about a guy who's been doing this longer than you. Well, most of you anyway.
If you don't get it from Red Hat.
Uhh, who's gonna pay to hire a trillion dollars' worth of architects, developers, testers, trainers, managers, distributors, support personnel, human resource departments, etc etc etc?
Or is all that functionality supposed to spring from the ether in a perfect steady-state universe of human perfection & utopia?
I fully understand where he's coming from with this, but another view of it could also be titled "How to collapse the world's economy with Open Source Software". Suddenly pulling a trillion dollars out of the economy would have a pretty severe effect.
Volume.
...in numbers of Libraries of Congress?
(anon because it's a stupid joke)
Assuming that losing license fees directly means profit gain is somewhat dubious logic to say the least. Sometimes it pays to invest in paid solutions; and rarely is any one software stack purely OSS or propriety.
throw new NoSignatureException();
RedHat (current owner of Cygnus) has made a successful business providing high quality support for FOSS software, and I think that's great! However, the $1T estimate seems like it might just be a tad biased and perhaps ignoring some hidden costs, but I can't tell from the FA because it just references the figure without any details for the estimate.
I'd be pretty pissed to see folks in big offices making real nice livings off of software that I designed and developed and tested.
I guess that's why I'm not a F/OSS developer.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Though he makes good points in the very brief article, turning it into a $1Trillion USD figure just comes off as shock tactics, and probably comes off as more open-source ranting to anyone just reading the headlines, or to anyone with a bias against open source proselytizing.
I don't have strong opinions about the matter, myself. I've seen some open source disasters where the proprietary solution is the industry standard for very good reasons, and I've also seen open source projects that are amazing, and amazingly practical.
I spend more on support than I do on software and there's almost no support even purchasable for opens source so I'd save a bundle!
I'm sure I'll get modded troll or something but I'm being serious. Some software is really expensive like matlab. But it always works. But a couple times a year I have to swicth from Fink to macports or vica versa because one or the other won't build the dependencies I need for matplot lib or octave. that costs me a lot of money in time.
Open source is not a cheap replacement if your time has value. But I still use it a lot none the less. it may not be cheap but sometimes it is better or has features you can't replicate easily in a single computing environment outside open source.
The biggest advantage and problem with open source is portability. I use open source so that I gan give my code written on top of it to someone else. I can't do that if I write in matlab and use exotic toolkits. But on the flip side it's also why code written in open source rather than a homogenous environment is so fragile and may not work in a few years (because say some critical library is gone). (Take for example the disappearance of whythelucky stiff and thus the demise of all SYCK based YAML bindings.)
SO it's true that you'd save a bundle on open source. You'd wish you could pay to have it maintained. You will pay with your own time instead.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
While I can appreciate the appeal of open/free source for IT guys like myself, I can't help but think that some of us push this ideal a bit too far. I currently make a living writing software, as millions of others do, and I'd like to continue making a living for the foreseeable future. Developers need to eat, too. The normal reply to a comment like this is that customers will pay for the support, rather than the software itself. Okay with me, but then how are customers going to save one trillion dollars?
What other industry consists of so many people that argue that the products they develop (or services they provide, if you prefer) should be free? Do doctors or lawyers or engineers ever argue that their service should be free? Construction workers? Accountants? Anyone? We're shooting ourselves in the foot.
I got a chuckle from this gem:
The reality of the situation was that we couldn't find any names that were not previously registered. When I lamented this fact to a couple of my Net friends, one of them searched the dictionary for words that contained "GNU". And "Cygnus" seemed the one that was least obscene
Free Martian Whores!
While I found this read interesting, I was a little disappointed to find much of his evidence random strings of numerical data. I'm sure anyone here can infer the cost savings and increased support in moving from an MS office to OpenOffice suite scheme within their enterprise, or transitioning from [Microsoft Product X] to [Opensource Magic Y]. On the other hand though, there's no insight as to how to deal with the seemingly obvious problem of our interdependency on these licensed products. I'm a database developer where I work, so speaking from where this impacts me the most, I can appreciate simple things like leveraging MySQL or other free source apps where appropriate. On the same vein, I don't see how reading this article immediately makes me jump up and go "Oh! Let's transition off of oracle for our company wide HR system." There's a reason all of these products have kept themselves going over the past 10, 15, etc years - and its more than just marketing and capitalism at work. Saying you can completely replace all or most of your IT resources with open source initiatives is ambitious at best, and completely ignorant at worst.
He's working under the assumption that both closed and open software provide exactly the same services.
There are closed source packages for which no open solution exists. Fatal flaw in argument located.
If open source is truly a better solution then it will win in the end. Given that Linux was released before even Windows 3.1 and that Windows has completely dominated the market shows this does not seem to be happening. Perhaps people like Windows more than Linux. Perhaps Windows is easier to use and thus gets wider distribution. Perhaps evil corporations are killing Linux in a grand conspiracy. Whatever the reason facts are facts :) Now get back to work and polish that software so it doesn't suck so hard.
Flame on.
I think the numbers are misleading. Of the $60B "saved".. how much of that would have been projects that never launched in the first place due to the cost involved with COTS software? I bet there was more than $60B saved by companies that pirate software. Perhaps there should be a story on how we could save a trillion dollars if only we'd stop doing things legally.
The guy is talking about FOSS saving all this money, so he takes to making outlandish claims to get PR for himself, hits for his site.
This is my sig.
Most proprietary software companies spend little money on software development. The big players have margins close to 80% with a significant portion of their expenses in marketing and sales. Open Source companies are conduits of money and support to FOSS projects, making money off support and add on features. Generally low margins and small marketing and sales budgets (mostly word of mouth and try before you buy). Now, a massive movement to open source software will cause less total employment in the software industry, but the vast majority of those losses will be in non-technical fields. The economic issue is software is worth only ~25% of what people pay for it today. As performance gains from software purchases decline, the ROI is less compelling, and thus cost of software more critical. The critical shift now is convincing software consuming companies to shift from buying prepackaged software to contributing to the development of open source software. That could be co-ops of like minded software consumers, or some other innovative way.
Listen, mutual funds a mugs game. You want to get in on the real investing. Open Source is where it's at. I'm managing a lot of peoples' money in the Open Source derivatives market, but I like you so I'll squeeze you in. Minimum investment is $100,000 but I've delivered consistent 20% returns to my clients over the last decade, as these complicated 1000 page spreadsheets will show. Really, if you aren't inversting in Open Source, you might as well be lighting your money on fire.
Life needs more saving throws.
"How To Save $1 Trillion a Year With Open Source." Step 1: be the sum of all IT organizations worldwide.
But what about staff training, support etc..?
Windows skills are cheap and plentiful. People may dabble with Linux, but those who truly know their stuff are probably already earning lots as a Unix or Linux admin.
Normally the windows in the Broken Window Fallacy are glass windows, not Windows OS.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
When Torvalds said Linux was bloated, was he talking about the penguins wallet?
Great that will make up for the 200billion we apparently lose to piracy! Seriously who could come up with/report such an obviously out of the world BS statistic while keeping a strait face.
Yes, but does it run Li... Wait, what?
IMO, I feel a good company is one that stays competitive. I've always felt that the best way to do this is to branch out. There is no better way in todays economy than to get your own team of awesome programmers and have them work on maintaining your codebase or rolling your own product. Assuming you arent the market leader, you have the added bonus of possibly selling your product to your competitors.
If they are using your product, and you keep your sold product a step or two below your current build, you now KNOW you have the advantage.
The ever-useful Google/WikiPedia combo pointed to a research report estimating the global size of the software industry at $308B in 2008. Saving $1T by not paying licensing fees to an industry worth 1/3rd as much would be a neat trick. Especially given how even $0 Open Source software is not free to support.
SirWired
Irony
That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
It does provide a link to the paper that is the source of the estimate, but I suppose clicking the link would be too much to ask.
There is truth in the argument/concern that those dollars saved are dollars that are *not* going to pay other companies for non-free software. The naysayers use this as an argument against FOSS saying that it undermines the industry and therefor the economy. This is the same thing doom-sayers argue about the evils of automation and computerization. It costs jobs.
The only way things like this won't cripple the economy with lost jobs is if the money saved by things like these is not used to line the ever-deeper pockets of CEOs.
Think about it. If your company saved $1 million by using FOSS, and then used those savings to enable employees to work fewer hours for the same pay- then we are progressing as a society where computerization/automation/software are becoming true labour saving devices enabling us all to have more free time.
Otherwise it just ends up widening the gulf between the upper management and the workers/unemployed. Ultimately the first option is the only sustainable one.
No particular reason for FOSS to be cheaper once it's not "free beer". RH or Novell could very price Linux solutions at level higher than MSFT. Ubuntu, Debian or other traditional FOSS could be much cheaper (depending what kind of support model you use)
Wait, when would an end-user need to use the command for any of his daily tasks? Office apps? Email? Browsing porn on company time? Okay, maybe if he's looking at ASCII porn in elinks. Sure, the IT guys will spend some time in the command line, but you see the same thing in Windows administration.
And what work environment are we talking about where end-users are permitted to install *anything* on their machines? That's a huge best practice violation. If they want something installed, they submit a request to the helpdesk, who install it for them. The EXACT SAME way it is done in any decent Windows environment.
Time adjustment is a non-issue. How long did it take people to adjust from XP to Vista, or 98 to XP? Hell, the #1 most common help ticket we get at work is people who can't figure out how to do something in Office 2007 because of the retarded ribbon. They knew where the command was in the menus in 2003. Linux takes time to adjust, but once done, you don't have to keep readjusting every time a new release comes out. The typical adjustment is one of interface issues, and with the exception of KDE 3.5->4.X, you just don't see the major UI changes in Linux that you do in Windows.
I'm pretty sure his $1 trillion figure doesn't include the cost of retraining every user to use a new OS and applications, at a cost of over $2000 per seat. Your first year would be a lot more expensive because of the switchover; 2 or three years down the road you would start seeing a substantial cost savings since you only be paying for minor support and training of new employees. In the long term it does make good economic sense, but try selling that in a corporate environment where bonuses are based on cost savings THIS QUARTER, not 3 years from now.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The argument in favor of FOSS should be about choice (vs lock-in). Organizations will spend relatively the same amount of energy either in time or money to get work done. Work will include goods (hardware), services (software) and support. However, success is more related to position, leverage and (ultimately) advantage. The advantage of FOSS is that an organization can more easily shop work around (if the work is software). Too often FOSS is seen as helping to cheapen the market, when it really is about opening up the market.
Myth: Proprietary SW Engineers get paid; FOSS Engineers do it for free. Reality: Have been working on various FOSS projects for 25+ years. Every hour I've worked, contributing to FOSS, I've been paid (by various and sundry employers and clients).
The problem with any sort of TCO study always comes down to two things:
Use Linux when you can, Windows when you have to. Unfortunately, you usually have to...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
In 2006 Open Source software and services earned $1.8B USD50 as compared with $235B USD in packaged software sales51 (which likely pulled through an additional $235B USD in support and services52). No matter how one looks at it, Open Source solutions represent less than 1% of global software spend, and yet now enable a reduction of more than 25% of such spending (because $60B is more than 25% of $235B). More impressively, Open Source solutions represent less than 0.1% of global ICT spend, and have already been estimated to deliver back 2% in total returns ($60B is approx 2% of $3T). With these kinds of numbers, the idea of spending half one's budget on open source software and half on proprietary becomes meaningless: the whole problem could be solved twice over with Open Source solutions for 10% of what is being spent right now.
They're assuming that the ratio of (free cost/licensed cost) compared to returns will remain constant. I propose that as they convert their entire shop to FOSS, costs will rise above the status quo. Sysadmins and linux geeks will make the leap quickly, but the rest of your support staff will have to be replaced or retrained. Helpdesk person supporting Windows who is not a linux geek will not know what questions to ask to support linux.
Haven't even addressed productivity. And if you think the average user will make the switch without a gun to their head, I call BS! Techies, geeks, early adopters and mac fans might be able to live in either environment (sorry, maybe not the fanbois) (couldn't resist), but Average Joe wants to fire up Outlook and Explorer and PowerPoint. 2007's ribbon (BTW, Ribbon = Menu + Toolbar, easy) causes tons of problems. Take away their start button. They'd riot.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
I don't want to fuel this old thread, but I upgraded my computer, which was a dual boot machine. Windows and Linux. I changed everything but the hardrive. After the upgrade, Linux just booted at the new hardware without a blink. But iIt took me three hours to set up windows properly.
I couldn't find the setup CD for my wall-in-one printer. It was impossible to print on Windows before I downloaded the 200mb(!) setup utility for windows. Guess wich OS just printed and scanned out of the box?
Oh, BTW, back when I installed Linux, I didn't used a single line on the shell. All the setup was done with some kind of GUI.
Welcome to the 21th century, where Linux evolved quite a bit while you were whining about it
-- dnl
Shouldn't this article be named "How to further bankrupting your economy by not putting money back into it"? ;)
A switch is distinctly non-trivial for a very simple reason:
Solutions which involve changing the problem to fit the solution rather than the other way around are inevitably poorly received. This explains the continued popularity of Sharepoint - it allows people to continue to email documents around (even if those documents are never likely to be printed) in exactly the same way as they used to before web-based services became common.
Today, thousands of businesses have software in place where there's an uneasy truce which may well involve some minor problem changes but by and large the software suits the problem.
But a lot of F/OSS software is developed to solve a particular (maybe rather specific) problem and the suggestion that it could be modified to solve both the original problem and another, new problem winds up getting shot down in flames. Example:
http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-zeilenga-ldup-harmful-02.txt
(notwithstanding the fact that by this time virtually every major LDAP server on the planet except for OpenLDAP supported multimaster replication)
The problem is getting a whole bunch of big companies to come up with simple usable interfaces. Doesn't happen easily.
That's why even FOSS-clueful users at said big companies will routinely vote for the more polished commercial applications over FOSS alternatives. Example. As a longtime Photoshop hater, I gave GIMP a lusty try, and after a couple weeks gave up in disgust. Mod me a troll if you like, but to my mind FOSS is like organic food. Sure, it may be better, but I ain't paying twice as much for it (in the FOSS case, of my time).
It's obvious to every Human Interface designer on the planet that Adobe does not have one in their employ. Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious that most FOSS has never been in the same room with one either.
They forget two things, nothing is free, and you get what you pay for.
That could explain why Internet Explorer sucks so much
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
Hmm, I'm going to switch to using Open Source software right now! I figure, at this rate, I can quit my job as a software engineer if I can save $1 Trillion dollars a year! Heck, I'd do it for a measly $1 million
I don't want to fuel this old thread, but I upgraded my computer, which was a dual boot machine. Windows and Linux. I changed everything but the hardrive. After the upgrade, Linux just booted at the new hardware without a blink. But iIt took me three hours to set up windows properly.
Well, I just added a hard drive to *my* dual boot system, and it took me 3 hours to convince lilo that the boot drive had changed...
I'd think so. Cygnus was founded in '89.
There are ChangeLogs in the GCC repository that go back to January '88.
Before that, it was RMS and a few fellow hackers.
I never said it was perfect. I said I has evolved a long way since the times where nothing worked and people spent the whole time typing obscure commands at the shell.
-- dnl
> and with the exception of KDE 3.5->4.X, you just don't see the major UI changes in Linux that you do in Windows.
:).
Don't worry, I hear the Mozilla bunch are going to introduce a ribbon too. OK after the uproar I hear they're not going to call it a ribbon, but they still intend to change the UI significantly
As for the KDE change, that's the reason I stopped using KDE after so many years of using KDE. I don't really like GNOME, but it became a lesser evil in comparison to KDE 4.x.
Switch to grub if you can. I've found grub to be *much* easier to work with than lilo.
Why did it take you 3 hours? Were you attempting to move a partition or something?
If it was just boot order, then you can generally fix that in the bios without having to touch Lilo.
If it's the drive ordering moving partitions, then it's pretty simple. Either boot to a utility CD or floppy or just press the shift key before the lilo screen appears and type init=/bin/sh to get to a shell. Mount your drive, got /etc/lilo, edit the lilo.conf to reflect the new drive assignments, then run lilo and it will commit the change.
BTW, this isn't abnormal at all. It can and does happen with dual boot and regular windows systems too. There has been many occasions where I have had to enter the recovery console or use a live linux CD to change the boot.ini of a windows box after adding or removing a drive.
This also happens quite a bit when needing to copy a partition to a new drive (both windows and linux).
Well, the Mozilla ribbon isn't quite what comes to mind when you hear the word nowadays:
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2009/09/24/no-ribbon-planned-for-the-firefox-ui/
Granted, it *is* still a pretty big change from the current setup. I probably should have said "very seldom see" instead of "don't see". TBH, I was really thinking about the WM changes when I made that statement. I didn't mean for third-party apps to get lumped in (since the Mozilla change will affect both operating systems).
And I hear ya on KDE. I never cared for gnome, but KDE 4.x is even less appealing, IMO. They've made some major strides since the 4.0 release, but I still don't care for it. So now my nice shiny 4GB RAM, 1GB video card system is running XFCE. Such a waste of video memory =)
Did it take you that long to figure it out or did you repeatedly enter "/sbin/lilo" for three hours before it worked?
My point is: the parent is speaking of upgrading a system but you're speaking of breaking it. Next time take some time to think before you yank a boot disk out from under a system.
Hey you brought up Office 2007 first ;).
;).
I personally think it'll be funny to watch the fireworks if Kingsoft introduces a Microsoft Outlook clone (and maybe even an Exchange backend). Especially if Kingsoft Office skips the ribbon interface or makes it optional.
Go check out Kingsoft. Did they do a "huawei" on Microsoft
But really the opensource bunch have and will change the UI. And since a large number of the developers are not as market driven, they may do even sillier stuff. Microsoft does eventually listen - just look at Vista -> Windows 7.
Whereas do the KDE bunch listen? My experience is they're just going to say "WORKSFORME". Believe me KDE is inferior in many ways when compared to the Windows stuff. KDE tiles tasks on their taskbar top to bottom first then left to right. That's broken since if you close one task everything to the right shuffles position. So I'm not optimistic when looking at KDE 4.x.
My desktop system is running Windows XP SP3, and my server system is running Ubuntu (but with no GUI). And I'll say to the OSS purists/fanatics out there: "WORKSFORME".
I'll agree that MS has done some things really well. The UI is decent, AD rocks, etc.
KDE does have some very annoying issues, as does Gnome, XFCE, etc. I'm not enough of a fanboy to worship any of them. I'll use whatever works best for me. And for me, that means a mixed environment. I've got Windows boxes, Linux boxes and BSD boxes.
And I'm fine with changes, even major ones. As long as they do them in such a way that I can tell my users to "enable classic mode" if they don't like the changes.
Sorry, but I disagree with you. sumdumass is talking about a very common situation: the guy buys a disk, plugs it on his desktop and the system stops booting.
This should not happen and, if happens, the system should support the user and guide him through the necessary changes.
-- dnl
Sure, the IT guys will spend some time in the command line, but you see the same thing in Windows administration.
Not when I was a Windows admin, although that was nearly ten years ago. At least at the time you could pass all the exams for MCSE and more or less do anything you needed to do without even knowing how to open up that strange, confusing chalkboard-looking thingie. It so happens that I did know it, and sure, it was occasionally useful, but it wasn't strictly necessary.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
> Three right turns = one left. It is a universal rule!
Which does not necessarily apply in locations where penguins rule!
Well yeah, it is optional, but for typical tasks, the console is usually faster than the interfaces for things like Exchange, SQL Server, IIS, etc. Most Windows admins have *some* knowledge of the command line.
You don't have to use the command line for the typical daily tasks, but this also holds true for Linux.
And I'd like to know why it took someone 3 hours to get Windows working. I can backup, do a clean install, and apply patches and install software in three hours.
This guy's anecdote is not about the ease of use for Linux or inferiority of Windows. It's about how much more he knows about Linux than Windows. His Linux upgrade went fine, but he messed up the Windows upgrade. He complains lost a disc he needed for Windows and had to download one which was 200 MB. Nevermind the fact that it's his fault he lost the CD, he also would have had to download the Linux ISO.
In my Linux experience, for every system that worked fine out of the box, I've dealt with one that needed drivers not in the distro, configuration the installer did not perform but should have, and on more than one occasion getting a system that would not boot because of kernel or bootloader issues ("noapic nolapic" anyone?). I've had problems installing Windows, too, but I've done that so many times I basically don't even need to think anymore and it still comes out right or I'm familiar with how to fix all the common and uncommon problems which arise. HDD not detecting? No SATA drivers. I have a USB floppy or I can use nLite. I'm to the point now that I know that if I'm going to install XP that I should look for the driver disk before I even begin.
This isn't the fault of Windows or Linux. You just need more experience.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
You don't provide enough details to comment on.. Added a hard drive, and changed the boot drive to a blank drive ? .. I am already pretty sure what you did, but you purposely left out the part of what you did to the blank drive before you tried to make it the boot drive.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
What exactly do you disagree with? That changing the order of disks breaks an installation?
I'd agree that it's a shame that something like that can happen. And sure: it would be nice if a system could help you with a problem like that. But seriously, how can a system help you without a boot disk? Do you even know what a boot disk is?
Obviously, the fix is with Windows and Linux the same: you pop in an install disk and repair your system.
And why do you call him somedumass?
You will have to ask someone who claim it took 3 hours to get windows running. However, depending on the internet connections speed, it can take sufficiently longer then 3 hours to patch a windows system along. It's supposedly going to take a day or more just to upgrade to windows 7.
I think you are confusing posts. I replied to the guy who claimed to of spent 3 hours with Lilo because he added a new drive. I responded with the easiest ways to do that in case he or anyone else reading needs to do it again in the future. It appears that you are thinking of the post before his which I did not reply to.
I've seen the same problems in linux and windows. However, in recent times, they are rare in both. Adding and removing drives still seems require some extre special love in most cases. But that's to be expected.
Actually, what I spoke about is the fault of both. Actually, it's limitations on both. It has nothing to do with experience, if lilo or the boot.ini get out of whack, you will not have a booting system until it's fixed. As I said before, adding or removing drives is the easiest way to mess them up. They are easy to fix though and shouldn't take 3 hours.
Easy, use GRUB
When changing hardware components, like video or M/B, Windows installation is screwed up. Not once did my WinXP come up after I changed my motherboard. Just recently I upgraded my video card from a 2xDVI to a DVI + HDMI video card, Windows XP with decided that I need to reconfigure my whole video setup, while Linux just booted without any interactions with correct setup. That is inferiority of proper hardware detection in Windows.
How to pull 1 trillion dollars from businesses hiring developers.
It's nice to see good and responsible promotion of FOSS.
Just refer to it as the GNU Image Manipulation Program. If anyone calls it GIMP, tell them it is an unfortunately acronym, and move on.
The problem is that unfortunate acronyms and obscure WTF? names -
Ogg Vorblis Theora Thusnelda, I'm looking at you, kid -
undermine the credibility of your project and are all to common in FOSS.
The image it conveys is that of a dork in Star Trek briefs geeking out over the comic books he keeps under his bed.
That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
I rather think I have it exactly:
irony (n) - originally meant to describe a phrasing of words whose meaning is the opposite of its literal statement, this overused slashdot word has come to mean any sort of notable relationship between the beginning of a body of text and its lexical end.
Examples:
Liberal Poster: "I always thought Bush was stupid, and ironically, he was!"
Conservative Poster: "I always thought Obama was a socialist, and ironically, he is!"
General Snarky Remark about FOSS: "Oh the irony, the FOSS guy talks about not paying for software, yet, begs for money."
General Snarky Remark about Closed Software: "Oh the irony, Windows ran an ad about stability, but it crashed on my machine."
And finally:
"Ironically, nearly every comment on Slashdot, is ironic."
This is my sig.
Add in the time you spend doing registry hacks on Windows.
Then add the time you spend dealing malware.
You seem to be assuming that software is installed individually on each PC, so you also need to adjust for easier software installation on Linux.
Anyone who claims that Linux requires use of the command line should just be modded troll and ignored: the topic has been discussed plenty of times, everyone knows the claim is BS, so stop wasting everyone's time.
He complains lost a disc he needed for Windows and had to download one which was 200 MB. Nevermind the fact that it's his fault he lost the CD, he also would have had to download the Linux ISO.
You are missing the point. For Linux he only needs the one install CD. For Windows he needs the OS CD and others with hardware drivers on them - multiple acquisitions (buy or download) rather than one.
I've had problems installing Windows, too, but I've done that so many times I basically don't even need to think anymore and it still comes out right or I'm familiar with how to fix all the common and uncommon problems which arise.
You are still undermining the arguments of Windows advocates who claim that Windows is easier to install,
Anyone who calls someone a troll and suggests they should be ignored all while not ignoring them should be modded as a troll. I was expressing my opinion that's what a message board is for. It isn't for agreeing with everyone. I realized that posting on /. about ./ might ruffle some feathers. But, you can't complain when someone makes the 'true cost of Linux' point when the article is about how much money it saves you.
I am a programmer. I have worked in both Windows environments and Linux. I couldn't get away without using the command line to do my job when using Linux. Was it because I had never bothered with Linux before? Probably, but if you know what you are doing in Windows you don't spend enough time with malware and I have never needed to do a registry hack.
You had the best reply to this sub-thread; sorry that the kool-aid drinkers bumped you down to -1.
Another great reply to this sub-thread; sorry that the kool-aid drinkers bumped you down to 0.
Not its not. I will explain to you what was going on: I was trying to install windows xp in a core 2 duo and and the hard drives where all sata. I didn't know that windows home would not recognize the second core and sata recognition (at least the way my bios was running) was not supported before service pack 2. So, I had to get a windows professional, which hadn't a service pack 2 and try to install the service pack on it.
The machine in trouble was my only one, so I had to install virtual box on linux and install a windows on it in order to install the service pack on the iso image I was going to use to burn a new windows installer with the service pack 2.
I'm no expert on neither windows or linux, but this is not easy at all...
-- dnl
I have to disagree: to type /sbin/lilo is easy. Knowing *what* to type is not. Either someone tell you that or hell will freeze over before you figere it out by yourself. And google is some kind of "someone", BTW
-- dnl
Red Hat charges money for "support" rather than "license". As a user (I am talking lay user, not a slashdot geek), that will mean 're-labeling' of software costs. Of course they will get open source software, better software etc. but they will need to pay - someone. Make that $1 Trillion in support costs rather than license costs. Net-net no reduction. And the ones on FOSS are already not paying anything.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
Yes! You too can save a trillion dollars!
First;
Get a trillion dollars...
I say things which affects my Karma negatively. (and I don't care) For instance; All religion is false.
There is where we can save money.
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ryan-jones/digital-son/changing-face-energy-seen-open-source-advocate
If Disney were to be given a monopoly on food, we can be sure they would practice good husbandry of food...Ãzel ders
Come one, I know all that. Everyday I sit with three other sys admins, and I'm sure that particular problem would baffle them as well (for a while). That _I_ happened know what to do, was because I googled for 1 minute (the "think" I was speaking of, two posts ago), and I've been there before. I haven't used lilo for years though, precisely because of it being much less user friendly than grub. What you fail to see is that pulling a boot disk will render ANY system useless, so just don't do that or think (but you can always easily revert the situation and then think, on your old configuration).
And I'll just repeat myself again: yes, it _would_ be nice if a system could help you with a missing boot disk, but obviously hardware just doesn't do that. You should understand that the hypothetical programming -that helps- you speak of would originate from the BIOS. Or, better still: from the embedded linux on your motherboard. But I just haven't seen anything like that before, have you?
It is a nice idea, by the way. I'm sure we'll be seeing that in years to come.
Quoting: "...when would an end-user need to use the command for any of his daily tasks? " Well, everyday! Not exactly the command line, but real world applications running programs emulating VT100 and 3270 terminals in full text mode. Almost any major company (banks, retailers, supermarkets, etc) uses text screen programs. You don't need a Windows, or for that matter, not even a PC, a terminal would do. The thing is that in real life, you run a mix of Windows applications (that off course can be run in Linux at a more lower cost) and many text-based apps. How long will this be the norm? At least 20 more years, by my humble understanding.
Well, there's a big difference between an app with a text interface and "using the command line" (in the sense the OP was referring to). The OP wasn't talking about hitting "N" to create a new entry, he was talking about typing in commands like "egrep '^(0|1)+ [a-zA-Z]+$' searchfile.txt" to get their work done
And I think you might be overestimating the number of *end* users still working with the old VT100 emulators. Both of the banks I use provide a shiny point-and-click interface for all the tellers, loan processors, etc. As do my supermarkets (all checkout stations are P-A-C), and almost every retail store I've been to that isn't located in Elk Snout, TN.
Yes, behind the scene, a lot of businesses still have have pure terminal apps. But most industries started migrating away from these interfaces for the end users many years ago. Take airlines, for example. 5 years ago, flight attendants used an old-school text interface to manage trips. Nowadays, they use a shiny PHP/ASP/etc app (depending on the airline).
Uh, if you're running a server and you have X11 running, you either have strange requirements or you are, in fact, a moron.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Of course, how silly of me. Clearly there can only be *two* possible methods.
I mean, you certainly couldn't use a web-based interface like Webmin, that doesn't require you to run X11. Or be doing DB admin work through phpmyadmin. And you certainly couldn't tunnel a VNC connection through SSH. And we all know there's no way to tell the X11 server not to accept connections from anywhere other than localhost, right (*cough* -nolisten tcp)? And it's not like admins ever remote into user machines, right? And there's *certainly* no possible way you can block port 6000 on your company firewall, allowing only internal connections.
Let me guess, you're the type who thinks that the console port is the *only* acceptable way to manage a switch, those crazy web interfaces be damned. This is 2009, you can have a GUI on Linux boxes without opening the gates of Hell.
You may or may not have to spend $2 trillion on education to turn every noob into a l337 h4xx0r to keep their Linuxen running, patched, stable, up-to-date, sleek, fully featured, secure, and hip.
Imagine explaining "you can't just let it patch itself in the middle of the night, you have to recompile the kernel" to your grandfather the insurance salesman.
Imagine there's nobody there to explain that to him.
Now you know why Linux isn't ubiquitous.
This is ridicules, remember that every user within the organization needs to be reeducated, which costs money and time, .. every working system needs to be migrated and tested, which costs money and time, .. after changing all of this every user needs to get familiar with those systems, which costs time and money, .. some hardware will have to be replaced, which costs money, .. in the long run it will save you money, .. before you get are going to save any money you are going to have to invest a lot of money, .. opensource will save you money in the long run, .. it is actually going to cost you before you can even do this, before you get return on investment you are going to need a lot of time.