No need. The distros all ship modular kernels. If e.g. your server has no audio hardware, no audio drivers will be loaded. IMHO maintaining two separate kernel branches would be inefficient - and if two, why not a third, low-power kernel branch, and a fourth, router-optimized kernel branch? This road leads to madness, and we lose sight of the fact that the one general purpose linux kernel is flexible enough that it works pretty well on everything from embedded devices to gaming workstations to mainframes to supercomputers.
Assuming there is a valid case for a desktop performance oriented kernel and a server performance oriented kernel, the vendors could easily provide separate optimized kernel packages, built from the same source, but with different options. The desktop users want low latency for video, music and 3D FPS gaming, while server users want scalability and throughput...
But until Linux's GUI developers get a contract with Video Card manufacturers to produce better device drivers, or until GUI developers get their act together and make the GUI's faster and more user friendly, I'm afraid to burst your bubble.
There may be some validity to this, however, it is very very easy to find video cards with great linux support and drivers - just buy nvidia. As for fast, user-friendly linux GUIs, where have you been, rip van winkle?
On top of this, OS X is based on Unix, meaning that it's going to stay secure for a long, long time. As time goes by, bugs will be found and squashed, as no software is perfect, but UNIX by design has less issues with bugs, and the bugs are harder to exploit.
Agreed, OSX foundation is solid, but so is Linux, for the same reasons.
Linux has promise, but it's being held back by developers that simply don't care, because they aren't paid to care. They're doing their own, individual thing, and not working towards what a User wants, they're working towards what a developer wants.
No idea where that bizzarre idea came from - the continuous incremental improvement in the linux GUI environment over the past 5 years, the user-friendliness, the eye candy, the easy customizability, all attest to a great deal of care.
And the only good IDE I've found for Linux is KDevelop, which requires me to install another set of GUI libraries, just to use it.
Hmm, kdevelop is certainly a good ide, but not the only good one, not by a long shot. I't's unclear what you mean by "requires me to install another set of GUI libraries, just to use it". OK, let me get this straight: You want to install a qt-based GUI, for creating qt-based apps, and you complain that you must have the qt libraries installed in order to use it? It's unclear exactly what your complaint is here. In any event, my installation of kdevelop consisted of checking the box next to "kdevelop", during the OS package selection phase of the linux install. That took what, a second or so? How could that be made easier?
It's really past time to have Linux desktop-ready. It's time to replace X with something that renders faster, or to simply get Cairo and the other eyecandy, GL-rendering, bad-ass GUI systems up and running. You guys are five years behind Mac OS X, and about a year or so behind Windows in this department.
FUD, I'm afraid. I use linux primarily (suse 9.3 ATM) but I also spend a lot of time on my wife's OSX box, and random expee and w2k boxes in the course of my daily work. I'm sorry, but I just can't see any reason for all the microsoft hype, I really can't. Where are the microsoft advantages you speak of?
OTOH, OSX is nice, but IMHO the interface preference is more a matter of taste. I like OSX better than any microsoft desktop I've seen, and the unix underpinnings are a huge win over the microsoft pc OS internals, but I actually prefer my suse linux desktop to OSX.
Ultimately, apple will capture some market share from microsoft, but the idea that OSX will kill linux is just silly.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but there are really two linux enterprise players at this point - redhat and suse. SLES 9 is really designed for the enterprise data center, where it's strengths are outstanding.
I work with a number of small and large businesses, all of whom have been moving their linux servers from redhat/fedora to suse, and we're also seeing core unix services and infrastructure moving from hpux and solaris to suse linux.
If your idea of suse is as one of the desktop distros, I think you're missing the point. OK, suse pro is actually very nice on the desktop, but that's more because everything is well thought out and "just works", rather than any attempt to specialize as a desktop distro.
I have to second the earlier poster's comment about suse vs mandrake. I hate to say anything bad about a linux distro, but mandrake has not been stable any of the times I've tried it.
My impression of mandrake is "cute but flaky", while suse is more along the lines of "cute and solid".
Amazing how quick the battlecry goes from "users should have choice" to "users should use linux"
drsmitty misquoted the poster and confounded "should use linux and ms windows" with "should use linux" - and this error somehow adds up to "insightful"?
I agree it sure sounds trollish;-) However, I'd say an arguement COULD be made. If you start with the fact that BSD "is" unix while Linux is "like" unix, then consider OSX is based on BSD, you could make the above argument.
There is the "legal" definition of unix aka "UNIX(TM)" and then there is tech definition of unix, aka "genetic" unix, i.e. the set of OSes which are clearly part of the unix family tree.
Neither Linux nor BSD are legally "UNIX(TM)", but both are clearly "unix"; Solaris and HP-UX are both "unix" and "UNIX(TM)".
As far as I'm concerned, OSX is "unix" as well, even though it's not "UNIX(TM)"; OTOH, microsoft windows is an example of an OS that is neither "unix" nor "UNIX(TM)"
Linux is just as much unix as BSD, but linux started out (though inspired by minix) as young Mr Torvalds' clean room implementation of SVR3-ish unix as described by Maurice J Bach in "The Design of the UNIX Operating System"
Do sweat it, though. Mac makes a better Unix anyway so you can always dump your Linux and go with BSD. BSD copyrights and patents are safe and companies like Apple will protect them.
Nice troll.
I have a mac, it runs OSX Tiger. Nice little desktop, but "a better unix?" I don't think so. Let's just say I prefer suse 9.3 on the desktop, and in the server room, there is absolutely no comparison.
There is certainly a place for OSX, but trolls like the parent do nothing to help the mac cause.
Of course there are people in this audience who have experience switching corporate computing platforms to linux - I've been working with a number of companies who have moved, or are in the process of moving services to linux, not only from old school risc unix systems, but also from high-maintenance microsoft windows platforms.
I'm sure my experiences are just like those of a lot of other sys admins here - nothing surprising, just a quiet evolution that is working quite well.
On the subject of linux to other OSes, there was a migration of some apps here from linux to HPUX about 4 years ago (mainly a political stunt, done just to make a statement) but the manager responsible for the move has been demoted, and the apps in question are being migrated back to linux.
Actually I had such a box (RH9) for some months as my firewall, and never had a breakin. (nowdays I run suse)
In any case, it's fairly tight, right out of the box. You can pretty much install suse pro from the dvds, connect it directly to the internet, and go to bed and sleep like a baby.
This sort of thing BTW would seem remarkable only to someone from a microsoft windows background.
Ah yes, spoken like an anonymous coward. I've used Oracle, postgres, and mysql, and interestingly, mysql seems to be the right tool for the job most of the time, in the projects I've been involved with.
There are certainly places where oracle is the right tool for the job, but I can't think of any case where postgres would be the best choice, mysql-bashing, anonymous coward postgres bigots notwithstanding;)
So let me get this straight: microsoft windows is not as unstable as it used to be; in other words they have taken some baby steps towards reliability of the sort that linux users have long enjoyed, so now we are supposed to drop whatever we're doing and switch to microsoft windows? Sorry, you'll have to do much better than that.
-- The main problem with linux is that it requires the user to have an IQ above 75 for best results
Yeah, actually windows is that expensive - for starters, by the time you add in all the virus software, an office suite, etc, it gets pricey. but more importantly, if I have to take linux down to run a windoze app, that's a high price, since I lose the availability of all the linux services during the time the machine is in peecee mode with windows.
For that reason, I ony buy native linux games (ut2004, doom3, and of course RtCW, quake 3 arena, and the other OpenGL-based 3D FPS classics)
As far as speed goes, the benchmarks at Tom's hardware shows that linux runs the games as just fast as windows, despite the more complex GUI display system.
Sorry, I just can't see buying into the whole microsoft thing just to play a game. If the game is so good I have to play it, and it's not available natively on Linux, I'll buy a game console, problem solved!
People don't switch from Windows XP to Linux because of its slick looks and ease of use. People switch to Linux because it's Free.
Anyway, I agree that these distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, but these distros are clearly not ready to take on Windows XP, either. Anyone who cares about slick looks and ease of use isn't going to switch to Linux in the first place.
Lol, what a funny man - as if there were actually anything cool about using a microsoft OS.
I switched from windoze to linux because I much prefer the power, reliability and flexibility of the linux environment. But seriously, my desktop is slicker than anything I've seen from microsoft.
I see expee and w2k every day at work, and frankly, I just don't understand the hype. I run linux on the desktop in part because I _do_ care about slick looks. Ease of use is a learned thing - I find windoze awkward and confusing, but I suppose a diehard expee user might say the same about non-microsoft OSes.
When I have occasion to use a windoze box nowadays (usually some friend wanting me to fix some windoze problem or something), I feel like an adult at a kindergartner's open house, squeezed into one of those tiny little desks, and can't wait to get out of that silly place.
I assume that what Paul Graham is complaining about must be SpamAssassin, or some other content filter, applying a score to articles containing URLs, which when looked up in DNS resolve to listed IP addresses. This is much less acceptable, since the sender has no way to know that their e-mail may have been classified as spam.
Um, no. That's not how spamassassin works - spamassassin uses a wide spectrum approach - it can take into account whatever blacklists you want to consult, but an RBL hit in spamassassin does not automatically mark the message as spam. An RBL hit is just one of over a thousand factors taken into consideration when making the call as to whether a specific message is spam or not.
Other methods used include central clearing houses of known spam messages (razor, DCC etc), time offsets, examination of header content, message content, weighted statistical analysis, presence of buzzwords, phrases, URL patterns and more.
Using all of the methods available and making a decision based on the overall picture makes spam assassin a very effective tool, with far fewer false positives than a hard coded "RBL in the MTA" approach.
On the other hand, SA does use more machine resources than does simply rejecting a message based on an RBL result, but that's the price of intelligent behaviour - it almost always requires more effort than a knee jerk reaction.
Linus:... "you'll find a lot of areas where Linux is better (often a lot better -- as in "it works"), and then you'll find a few narrow areas where one particular BSD version will be better."
Linus:... "I don't know anything about BSD technical internals, so I'm the wrong person to ask."
So how exactly is this diplomatic? It seems a little more baseless, bigoted, and presumptuous to me...
Halber Mensch! Halber Mensch! Geh weiter, in jede Richtung. Wir haben Wahrheiten für dich aufgestellt.
I don't think anyone has picked out this particular sentence and said "gee this is really diplomatic" - the observers were referring the overall tone I think.
In any case, how is the quote baseless? One can know from empirical verification that A performs X better than B without knowing anything about the internals of B, or even of A for that matter.
How is it bigoted? He admitted that BSD may do some things better than linux - he's being pretty gracious there IMHO.
How is it presumptuous? As someone who is intimately familiar with kernel design, and who no doubt has access to all sorts of performance information on a number of OSes, he seems to be perfectly within his area of expertise in all aspects.
Gee, experimental kernel code causing a panic? Whoda thunk?
Back in the real world, our suse servers stay up for years. Literally. I really don't see any difference in uptime behaviour between linux and any other of the unix OSes we use.
Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
Hullo? The monopolist is not being asked to hand over any code. They are being asked to simply provide the information neccessary for competitors to inter-operate with microsoft windows.
Please explain how that amounts to microsoft "dismantling itself"
You already mentioned openexchange. Of course there is always Lotus Notes, not exactly a drop-in m-exchange replacement but an interesting product all the same, and well suited to large enterprises.
Here are some possible ms-exchange replacement products of interest, in no particular order -
The vast majority of sizeable businesses are wired into Exchange. There's no suitable replacement in the OSS world, much less a drop-in replacement. Without this, it's next to impossible to get into this space.
There are a few commercial replacements for ms exchange, and migration kits to help the process along. The real problem is fear and ignorance.
You forgot antivirus, spyware detection/removal software, development tools etc - and then there's the cost of the new hardware which would be required in order to run mickeysoft expee.
In short, far from your supposed "inflation", it actually sounds as though they were being extremely conservative on the estimated cost difference, and giving microsoft the benefit of the doubt wherever possible.
How the mighty have fallen, poor bastards - how I remember the sun of a decade ago, how strong, innovative and proud they once were.
For them to be reduced to to this, kissing up to the peecee monopolist, is a saddening spectacle. IMHO it's a sign that sun is not long for this world, at least not the sun that we know.
We've seen the pattern repeated in the past, with one hapless company after another lining up for the same treatment, getting in bed with microsoft, taking a wad of cash and giving up far more than they realize, fading into irrelavance shortly thereafter.
Sun, it was good to know you - although we didn't always see eye to eye, it can't be denied that you contributed a lot to the internet and the unix community.
Slashdot Mirror
No need. The distros all ship modular kernels. If e.g. your server has no audio hardware, no audio drivers will be loaded. IMHO maintaining two separate kernel branches would be inefficient - and if two, why not a third, low-power kernel branch, and a fourth, router-optimized kernel branch? This road leads to madness, and we lose sight of the fact that the one general purpose linux kernel is flexible enough that it works pretty well on everything from embedded devices to gaming workstations to mainframes to supercomputers.
Assuming there is a valid case for a desktop performance oriented kernel and a server performance oriented kernel, the vendors could easily provide separate optimized kernel packages, built from the same source, but with different options. The desktop users want low latency for video, music and 3D FPS gaming, while server users want scalability and throughput...
In fact some vendors may already be doing this.
But until Linux's GUI developers get a contract with Video Card manufacturers to produce better device drivers, or until GUI developers get their act together and make the GUI's faster and more user friendly, I'm afraid to burst your bubble.
There may be some validity to this, however, it is very very easy to find video cards with great linux support and drivers - just buy nvidia. As for fast, user-friendly linux GUIs, where have you been, rip van winkle?
On top of this, OS X is based on Unix, meaning that it's going to stay secure for a long, long time. As time goes by, bugs will be found and squashed, as no software is perfect, but UNIX by design has less issues with bugs, and the bugs are harder to exploit.
Agreed, OSX foundation is solid, but so is Linux, for the same reasons.
Linux has promise, but it's being held back by developers that simply don't care, because they aren't paid to care. They're doing their own, individual thing, and not working towards what a User wants, they're working towards what a developer wants.
No idea where that bizzarre idea came from - the continuous incremental improvement in the linux GUI environment over the past 5 years, the user-friendliness, the eye candy, the easy customizability, all attest to a great deal of care.
And the only good IDE I've found for Linux is KDevelop, which requires me to install another set of GUI libraries, just to use it.
Hmm, kdevelop is certainly a good ide, but not the only good one, not by a long shot. I't's unclear what you mean by "requires me to install another set of GUI libraries, just to use it". OK, let me get this straight: You want to install a qt-based GUI, for creating qt-based apps, and you complain that you must have the qt libraries installed in order to use it? It's unclear exactly what your complaint is here. In any event, my installation of kdevelop consisted of checking the box next to "kdevelop", during the OS package selection phase of the linux install. That took what, a second or so? How could that be made easier?
It's really past time to have Linux desktop-ready. It's time to replace X with something that renders faster, or to simply get Cairo and the other eyecandy, GL-rendering, bad-ass GUI systems up and running. You guys are five years behind Mac OS X, and about a year or so behind Windows in this department.
FUD, I'm afraid. I use linux primarily (suse 9.3 ATM) but I also spend a lot of time on my wife's OSX box, and random expee and w2k boxes in the course of my daily work. I'm sorry, but I just can't see any reason for all the microsoft hype, I really can't. Where are the microsoft advantages you speak of?
OTOH, OSX is nice, but IMHO the interface preference is more a matter of taste. I like OSX better than any microsoft desktop I've seen, and the unix underpinnings are a huge win over the microsoft pc OS internals, but I actually prefer my suse linux desktop to OSX.
Ultimately, apple will capture some market share from microsoft, but the idea that OSX will kill linux is just silly.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but there are really two linux enterprise players at this point - redhat and suse. SLES 9 is really designed for the enterprise data center, where it's strengths are outstanding.
I work with a number of small and large businesses, all of whom have been moving their linux servers from redhat/fedora to suse, and we're also seeing core unix services and infrastructure moving from hpux and solaris to suse linux.
If your idea of suse is as one of the desktop distros, I think you're missing the point. OK, suse pro is actually very nice on the desktop, but that's more because everything is well thought out and "just works", rather than any attempt to specialize as a desktop distro.
I have to second the earlier poster's comment about suse vs mandrake. I hate to say anything bad about a linux distro, but mandrake has not been stable any of the times I've tried it.
My impression of mandrake is "cute but flaky", while suse is more along the lines of "cute and solid".
I've been using linux *heavily* since 1993 BTW.
... and if we had a story everytime a city chooses linux we'd have a lot of stories too.
But Vienna is huge. You have no idea what it means: Linux - it's not just for wieners anymore!
Amazing how quick the battlecry goes from "users should have choice" to "users should use linux"
drsmitty misquoted the poster and confounded "should use linux and ms windows" with "should use linux" - and this error somehow adds up to "insightful"?
I agree it sure sounds trollish ;-) However, I'd say an arguement COULD be made. If you start with the fact that BSD "is" unix while Linux is "like" unix, then consider OSX is based on BSD, you could make the above argument.
There is the "legal" definition of unix aka "UNIX(TM)" and then there is tech definition of unix, aka "genetic" unix, i.e. the set of OSes which are clearly part of the unix family tree.
Neither Linux nor BSD are legally "UNIX(TM)", but both are clearly "unix"; Solaris and HP-UX are both "unix" and "UNIX(TM)".
As far as I'm concerned, OSX is "unix" as well, even though it's not "UNIX(TM)"; OTOH, microsoft windows is an example of an OS that is neither "unix" nor "UNIX(TM)"
Linux is just as much unix as BSD, but linux started out (though inspired by minix) as young Mr Torvalds' clean room implementation of SVR3-ish unix as described by Maurice J Bach in "The Design of the UNIX Operating System"
Do sweat it, though. Mac makes a better Unix anyway so you can always dump your Linux and go with BSD. BSD copyrights and patents are safe and companies like Apple will protect them.
Nice troll.
I have a mac, it runs OSX Tiger. Nice little desktop, but "a better unix?" I don't think so. Let's just say I prefer suse 9.3 on the desktop, and in the server room, there is absolutely no comparison.
There is certainly a place for OSX, but trolls like the parent do nothing to help the mac cause.
Of course there are people in this audience who have experience switching corporate computing platforms to linux - I've been working with a number of companies who have moved, or are in the process of moving services to linux, not only from old school risc unix systems, but also from high-maintenance microsoft windows platforms.
I'm sure my experiences are just like those of a lot of other sys admins here - nothing surprising, just a quiet evolution that is working quite well.
On the subject of linux to other OSes, there was a migration of some apps here from linux to HPUX about 4 years ago (mainly a political stunt, done just to make a statement) but the manager responsible for the move has been demoted, and the apps in question are being migrated back to linux.
Why is it sad?
IMHO if you're running unpatched microsoft windows you should be scared.
Actually I had such a box (RH9) for some months as my firewall, and never had a breakin. (nowdays I run suse)
In any case, it's fairly tight, right out of the box. You can pretty much install suse pro from the dvds, connect it directly to the internet, and go to bed and sleep like a baby.
This sort of thing BTW would seem remarkable only to someone from a microsoft windows background.
But this is news - 12 minutes is a huge improvement for microsoft.
IIRC a previous study showed a mean time of 4 minutes on the net for expee to be taken over.
Seriously, do their problem domains overlap at all? Big servers with plenty of resources: Java + an ACID database.
um..
mysql IS an ACID-compliant database...
Wake up, Rip Van Winkle, 1998 is SO over.
Ah yes, spoken like an anonymous coward. I've used Oracle, postgres, and mysql, and interestingly, mysql seems to be the right tool for the job most of the time, in the projects I've been involved with.
;)
There are certainly places where oracle is the right tool for the job, but I can't think of any case where postgres would be the best choice, mysql-bashing, anonymous coward postgres bigots notwithstanding
So let me get this straight: microsoft windows is not as unstable as it used to be; in other words they have taken some baby steps towards reliability of the sort that linux users have long enjoyed, so now we are supposed to drop whatever we're doing and switch to microsoft windows? Sorry, you'll have to do much better than that.
--
The main problem with linux is that it requires the user to have an IQ above 75 for best results
Yeah, actually windows is that expensive - for starters, by the time you add in all the virus software, an office suite, etc, it gets pricey. but more importantly, if I have to take linux down to run a windoze app, that's a high price, since I lose the availability of all the linux services during the time the machine is in peecee mode with windows.
For that reason, I ony buy native linux games (ut2004, doom3, and of course RtCW, quake 3 arena, and the other OpenGL-based 3D FPS classics)
As far as speed goes, the benchmarks at Tom's hardware shows that linux runs the games as just fast as windows, despite the more complex GUI display system.
Sorry, I just can't see buying into the whole microsoft thing just to play a game. If the game is so good I have to play it, and it's not available natively on Linux, I'll buy a game console, problem solved!
People don't switch from Windows XP to Linux because of its slick looks and ease of use. People switch to Linux because it's Free.
Anyway, I agree that these distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, but these distros are clearly not ready to take on Windows XP, either. Anyone who cares about slick looks and ease of use isn't going to switch to Linux in the first place.
Lol, what a funny man - as if there were actually anything cool about using a microsoft OS.
I switched from windoze to linux because I much prefer the power, reliability and flexibility of the linux environment. But seriously, my desktop is slicker than anything I've seen from microsoft.
I see expee and w2k every day at work, and frankly, I just don't understand the hype. I run linux on the desktop in part because I _do_ care about slick looks. Ease of use is a learned thing - I find windoze awkward and confusing, but I suppose a diehard expee user might say the same about non-microsoft OSes.
When I have occasion to use a windoze box nowadays (usually some friend wanting me to fix some windoze problem or something), I feel like an adult at a kindergartner's open house, squeezed into one of those tiny little desks, and can't wait to get out of that silly place.
I assume that what Paul Graham is complaining about must be SpamAssassin, or some other content filter, applying a score to articles containing URLs, which when looked up in DNS resolve to listed IP addresses. This is much less acceptable, since the sender has no way to know that their e-mail may have been classified as spam.
Um, no. That's not how spamassassin works - spamassassin uses a wide spectrum approach - it can take into account whatever blacklists you want to consult, but an RBL hit in spamassassin does not automatically mark the message as spam. An RBL hit is just one of over a thousand factors taken into consideration when making the call as to whether a specific message is spam or not.
Other methods used include central clearing houses of known spam messages (razor, DCC etc), time offsets, examination of header content, message content, weighted statistical analysis, presence of buzzwords, phrases, URL patterns and more.
Using all of the methods available and making a decision based on the overall picture makes spam assassin a very effective tool, with far fewer false positives than a hard coded "RBL in the MTA" approach.
On the other hand, SA does use more machine resources than does simply rejecting a message based on an RBL result, but that's the price of intelligent behaviour - it almost always requires more effort than a knee jerk reaction.
From TFA:
... "you'll find a lot of areas where Linux is better (often a lot better -- as in "it works"), and then you'll find a few narrow areas where one particular BSD version will be better."
... "I don't know anything about BSD technical internals, so I'm the wrong person to ask."
Linus:
Linus:
So how exactly is this diplomatic? It seems a little more baseless, bigoted, and presumptuous to me...
Halber Mensch! Halber Mensch!
Geh weiter, in jede Richtung.
Wir haben Wahrheiten für dich aufgestellt.
I don't think anyone has picked out this particular sentence and said "gee this is really diplomatic" - the observers were referring the overall tone I think.
In any case, how is the quote baseless? One can know from empirical verification that A performs X better than B without knowing anything about the internals of B, or even of A for that matter.
How is it bigoted? He admitted that BSD may do some things better than linux - he's being pretty gracious there IMHO.
How is it presumptuous? As someone who is intimately familiar with kernel design, and who no doubt has access to all sorts of performance information on a number of OSes, he seems to be perfectly within his area of expertise in all aspects.
Gee, experimental kernel code causing a panic? Whoda thunk?
Back in the real world, our suse servers stay up for years. Literally. I really don't see any difference in uptime behaviour between linux and any other of the unix OSes we use.
OTOH ms windows is another story.
Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
Hullo? The monopolist is not being asked to hand over any code. They are being asked to simply provide the information neccessary for competitors to inter-operate with microsoft windows.
Please explain how that amounts to microsoft "dismantling itself"
You already mentioned openexchange. Of course there is always Lotus Notes, not exactly a drop-in m-exchange replacement but an interesting product all the same, and well suited to large enterprises.
Here are some possible ms-exchange replacement products of interest, in no particular order -
http://www.scalix.com/
http://www.bynari.com/
http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/
The vast majority of sizeable businesses are wired into Exchange. There's no suitable replacement in the OSS world, much less a drop-in replacement. Without this, it's next to impossible to get into this space.
There are a few commercial replacements for ms exchange, and migration kits to help the process along. The real problem is fear and ignorance.
You forgot antivirus, spyware detection/removal software, development tools etc - and then there's the cost of the new hardware which would be required in order to run mickeysoft expee.
In short, far from your supposed "inflation", it actually sounds as though they were being extremely conservative on the estimated cost difference, and giving microsoft the benefit of the doubt wherever possible.
How the mighty have fallen, poor bastards - how I remember the sun of a decade ago, how strong, innovative and proud they once were.
For them to be reduced to to this, kissing up to the peecee monopolist, is a saddening spectacle. IMHO it's a sign that sun is not long for this world, at least not the sun that we know.
We've seen the pattern repeated in the past, with one hapless company after another lining up for the same treatment, getting in bed with microsoft, taking a wad of cash and giving up far more than they realize, fading into irrelavance shortly thereafter.
Sun, it was good to know you - although we didn't always see eye to eye, it can't be denied that you contributed a lot to the internet and the unix community.
R.I.P.