Depends why you program... Some people do it for fun, some people to write programs for their own use, others do it as part of another job (eg system management)... All of these people stand to benefit from open source.
Only those who write software for sale stand to loose, and they are a small percentage of the overall. Most developers are employed by companies who's primary business is not selling software, they need some custom apps for their own specialized use and will employ programmers to write them. Proprietary vendors won't supply the software they need because the niche is too small, open source won't supply for the same reason.
Most companies will simply use software, and have absolutely no intention of ever distributing it...
The GPL does not apply unless you are distributing software. It has no restrictions on how you can use or modify the software internally. Proprietary software on the other hand does have usage restrictions as well as distribution restrictions which are often far stricter than the GPL.
The GPL may not give you as much freedom as say BSD, but it still gives you a lot more than proprietary software does, and it gives you all the freedom (unlimited use) that 99% of companies care about.
Pay for everything, and spend a lot of time/money keeping track of exactly what you paid for relative to what you're actually using... All these hidden costs soon add up.
windows typically utilises standard gui management tools. linux admin's typically utilise cryptic scripts that take even experienced admin's an hours to decypher.
The correct spelling is "decipher"
Linux admins use scripts because they are more efficient, a majority of common linux admin tasks can be accomplished using a gui too, yet you will only find them being used by people with minimal levels of unix experience... Season unix/linux admins will use the cli and scripts because they're usually faster and more efficient or even just because thats what they know. The CLI is easier to automate, and easier to chain multiple actions together with pipes, gui based tools very rarely give you the flexibility to do anything not thought of when the interface was originally designed. You cant do everything on windows with the gui either, some things still require manual tweaking... Also, one of the big selling points of win2k8 was an improved CLI... Do you think MS would make such an effort to improve the cli if the gui really was better for everything? They do it because a powerful cli is seen as an advantage for unix, and they want to try and match it.
Also, once you get underneath the graphical front-end you will find that linux is actually extremely simple, while windows is extremely complex, and to use your word "cryptic".
well, i can pick up the phone and have MS tell me exactly what my volume license costs me and what i get with it. can you do the same with linux? management need to know how much things are going to cost in order to budget, some linux guru telling us "it'll cost roughly this an hour and it takes as long as it takes" isn't the same.
You can pick up the phone and find out exactly how much the software will cost just to acquire. You don't need to do that with linux because the answer is zero. You can also find out which apps are covered by the volume agreement, but again that's not necessary with linux because all of the open source apps are always available to you.
What you're talking about with "some linux guru" is the time taken to configure everything to a working state, and noone will give you a "as long as it takes" answer unless they're incompetent, wether they use linux or windows.
why is it moronic? if you lose network connectivity what do you intend on doing? serial terminal? you may as well have a video card since you can't buy a mobo without one these days.
You can indeed buy motherboards without onboard video, i have several of them... Onboard video tends to be very low end, and having it on a machine which isn't going to use it is just wasteful. Do you think the average gamer wants to use onboard video, or have a motherboard that cost more because of it?
If the network goes down your server is rather redundant anyway, so your goal should be to fix the network ASAP... If only the network on the one server has gone down, then serial console is far more useful because its cheaper (power/hardware), faster (no need to shift video data over the network, no need to physically enter the server room), easier to script... Oh, and most networking equipment (routers, switches, firewalls etc) use serial consoles... Do you want to try and tell Cisco they should be putting video hardware and keyboard controllers in all of their routers so you can hook up a monitor instead of a serial console?
You don't require any such port on linux, take a look at devices like the linksys access points that can run linux.... They dont come with a serial port, you have to break out a soldering iron to get one.
A general purpose server will have some method of controlling it independent of any software because you could be running any software on it... Once installed, you no longer need it for linux tho windows will fail to boot if you remove the video.
That said, a serial port is more useful for remote admin purposes... It's faster, easier to script, cheaper to implement and run etc.
$100k is a lot of money, while it may be cheaper than buying lots of individual instances its still an insane amount of money to spend unnecessarily...
Oracle is just another example of overpriced proprietary software, that it's capable of running on linux is largely irrelevant, oracle want all the money going to them, not part of it going to the os vendor so it's in their interest to keep other costs to a minimum... incidentally, oracle can also run on windows and solaris which would have made it even more expensive.
Very few people will call themselves a linux/unix expert unless they really do know a lot about it... People who do know a lot about unix typically know a fair bit about windows too... People who know a lot about linux typically know other unixes (eg solaris) too... People who know unix are more likely to have a general interest in computers as a whole.
By contrast...
Many people call themselves windows experts, based on various things ranging from having fixed his parents/friends computers, to having done an mcse course... Only a small percentage of them have any real in depth knowledge... Many windows "experts", especially the less competent ones, don't know anything else and are resistant to learning it, even tho learning unix would make them more valuable. Many people did an mcse course just to get a job and have no real interest in computing, they don't care to learn anything new and are only interested in the bare minimum to get paid... They have no pride in their work, and don't want to do their job well, they just want to achieve the minimum level to avoid being fired.
When you filter out the generally quite useless people, you will find that the number of good staff is similar for both windows and linux with a fair amount of overlap between the two... Most people with a genuine interest in computers will have tried various systems.
In several companies i've seen, the unix guys have to show the windows guys how to do some more complex things with windows... That's not a good sign, but it does go to show why the unix people cost more.
In a recent case i had to help several windows techs remove malware from an infected system... They were running an automated scanner which didn't detect it, but looking through the registry and the list of ie plugins quickly revealed there was certainly malware installed. Any semi competent windows admin should be able to do that! My responsibility is unix machines, i shouldn't be called in to remove malware from windows boxes because the people employed specifically to manage them fall to pieces when their automated tools fail. And yes, they thought it was some kind of voodoo when i manually stripped the malware out of the registry, killed the processes and set permissions on the binaries so they could not be read or executed... Really simple stuff, but the vast majority of windows guys i've seen rely totally on automated tools to do stuff like that, and have no idea how to do it manually.
Yes, but the people who made the choice to save money would be saving someone else's money which they couldn't care less about... And in response they would lose their personal backhanders from microsoft, which they do care about...
FOSS only means you're on your own because you haven't paid for support... You're on your own if you get free proprietary software (pirated) too, only the free OSS is actually legal.
You want support for OSS? Buy support from one of the many vendors who provide it. No, it's not free as in beer, free beer software is for technically competent people who don't require support from anyone else.
Support for OSS is actually a lot better than proprietary for a number of reasons...
Support is optional, you can have legal software for free without having to pay for anything, this is great for people who don't need support. Proprietary software can only really be supported by it's original vendor, leaving a captive market where customers can be gouged... Anyone with a few competent staff can support OSS, there are plenty of vendors out there providing different levels of support for different prices... Shop around and take advantage of the market competition.
Only if you are a large important client with high level expensive support contracts.... If you are paying that much, you could get a better level of support from IBM, Sun or any one of a number of vendors... Or you could just hire some contract programmers to make changes for you. When your willing to throw enough money at the problem that MS would take notice, you would be able to get pretty much anything you wanted from OSS. Do you think MS would port any of their apps to linux if a large affluent customer demanded it? With OSS you have no such limitations, you could get pretty much anything done.
Because of the open nature of OSS it's possible for multiple vendors to provide high levels of support, including developer time, meaning the support becomes a competitive market in it's own right giving you more options, better service and lower prices.
How good are your small IT staff? Do none of them have some level of scripting/programming ability? It's pretty disturbing if they don't...
Yes, you can report the bug and hope for a patch, you can do the same with proprietary software... But with OSS you are able to keep up with their progress of implementing your fixes, and you have the option of hiring a programmer to implement the fix if it's really important to you. Depending on the size of your company, hiring a contract programmer for a few weeks may work out cheaper than buying proprietary software. OSS gives you choices that proprietary software doesn't offer you. So yes, it's better, because the worst case is that it's the same (in terms of getting bug fixes) but cheaper.
Most of those people who couldn't install ubuntu, couldn't install windows either (which is actually more difficult to install than ubuntu)... They will get computer repair shops to perform the install for them etc, or remain with the default install the machine came with.
So what's really needed, are more machines with linux preinstalled, priced considerably lower than windows ones...
And pc repair shops that know about linux and try to push it to their customers.... But this is unlikely to happen, because these shops make their money repairing broken windows installs, and linux would significantly decrease their revenue stream.
Strange, mine came with the english dictionary by default... I also found that the spell check as you type in openoffice continues to work with large documents, whereas msword seems to turn it off after 100 pages or so.
12/140 is close to 10%, once you have a significant percentage market share compatibility becomes less of a problem because other companies wont like to be incompatible with 10% of other companies they deal with.
In the short term yes, but openoffice offers a number of long term advantages such as the freedom to choose what platform you run it on, the open file format by default, and when/if you want to update, whereas mso 2003 will become unsupported and no longer have security updates or compatibility with current versions.
Yes... But what could work, is making a kind of hybrid system... The game ships with windows and linux binaries on the same media (data files are shared) and also has a livecd mode which is there if you want it... For those games that already include a linux version, making a livecd that supports most current hardware wouldn't be much additional effort.
You would need agreement from nvidia and ati to distribute their drivers, currently they disallow redistribution. Once you cover all current ATI/Nvidia cards you're pretty much set, other cards simply arent designed for gaming.
Your comparison is also invalid, because your hardware could be radically different to his, and you weren't able to perform the ubuntu comparison to see if you got 100+ fps (as it should if it follows his example, assuming your machine is considerably more powerful to achieve 50fps under vista).
Incidentally there were other tests done a few months ago showing wine and xp outperforming vista by a considerable margin in many games.
With linux, a distro specifically aimed at gaming could be created... One with a minimal interface (like the ones present on games consoles), rather than a bloated desktop environment, and nothing running in the background wasting cpu/mem...
There is a reason why the original xbox (celeron 700mhz, 64mb ram, geforce 3) can play games that would be uselessly unplayable on a windows machine of comparable spec.
A mix of both approaches works best... System packages should follow the same basic structure, while user installed apps should be self contained within their own directory (and still have bin/lib/etc subdirs so you have order and structure...).
The windows approach is the worst of the lot, since you end up with lots of different types of files all lumped together in the windows and system32 directories.
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It's also true that XP has slowed down as subsequent service packs are added (really, go try it, but don't connect the older ones to the internet)...
Depends why you program...
Some people do it for fun, some people to write programs for their own use, others do it as part of another job (eg system management)... All of these people stand to benefit from open source.
Only those who write software for sale stand to loose, and they are a small percentage of the overall.
Most developers are employed by companies who's primary business is not selling software, they need some custom apps for their own specialized use and will employ programmers to write them. Proprietary vendors won't supply the software they need because the niche is too small, open source won't supply for the same reason.
You will just get pirated distribution of binaries...
Most companies will simply use software, and have absolutely no intention of ever distributing it...
The GPL does not apply unless you are distributing software. It has no restrictions on how you can use or modify the software internally. Proprietary software on the other hand does have usage restrictions as well as distribution restrictions which are often far stricter than the GPL.
The GPL may not give you as much freedom as say BSD, but it still gives you a lot more than proprietary software does, and it gives you all the freedom (unlimited use) that 99% of companies care about.
Pay for everything, and spend a lot of time/money keeping track of exactly what you paid for relative to what you're actually using... All these hidden costs soon add up.
windows typically utilises standard gui management tools. linux admin's typically utilise cryptic scripts that take even experienced admin's an hours to decypher.
The correct spelling is "decipher"
Linux admins use scripts because they are more efficient, a majority of common linux admin tasks can be accomplished using a gui too, yet you will only find them being used by people with minimal levels of unix experience... Season unix/linux admins will use the cli and scripts because they're usually faster and more efficient or even just because thats what they know. The CLI is easier to automate, and easier to chain multiple actions together with pipes, gui based tools very rarely give you the flexibility to do anything not thought of when the interface was originally designed.
You cant do everything on windows with the gui either, some things still require manual tweaking... Also, one of the big selling points of win2k8 was an improved CLI... Do you think MS would make such an effort to improve the cli if the gui really was better for everything? They do it because a powerful cli is seen as an advantage for unix, and they want to try and match it.
Also, once you get underneath the graphical front-end you will find that linux is actually extremely simple, while windows is extremely complex, and to use your word "cryptic".
well, i can pick up the phone and have MS tell me exactly what my volume license costs me and what i get with it. can you do the same with linux? management need to know how much things are going to cost in order to budget, some linux guru telling us "it'll cost roughly this an hour and it takes as long as it takes" isn't the same.
You can pick up the phone and find out exactly how much the software will cost just to acquire. You don't need to do that with linux because the answer is zero. You can also find out which apps are covered by the volume agreement, but again that's not necessary with linux because all of the open source apps are always available to you.
What you're talking about with "some linux guru" is the time taken to configure everything to a working state, and noone will give you a "as long as it takes" answer unless they're incompetent, wether they use linux or windows.
why is it moronic? if you lose network connectivity what do you intend on doing? serial terminal? you may as well have a video card since you can't buy a mobo without one these days.
You can indeed buy motherboards without onboard video, i have several of them... Onboard video tends to be very low end, and having it on a machine which isn't going to use it is just wasteful. Do you think the average gamer wants to use onboard video, or have a motherboard that cost more because of it?
If the network goes down your server is rather redundant anyway, so your goal should be to fix the network ASAP...
If only the network on the one server has gone down, then serial console is far more useful because its cheaper (power/hardware), faster (no need to shift video data over the network, no need to physically enter the server room), easier to script...
Oh, and most networking equipment (routers, switches, firewalls etc) use serial consoles... Do you want to try and tell Cisco they should be putting video hardware and keyboard controllers in all of their routers so you can hook up a monitor instead of a serial console?
You don't require any such port on linux, take a look at devices like the linksys access points that can run linux.... They dont come with a serial port, you have to break out a soldering iron to get one.
A general purpose server will have some method of controlling it independent of any software because you could be running any software on it... Once installed, you no longer need it for linux tho windows will fail to boot if you remove the video.
That said, a serial port is more useful for remote admin purposes... It's faster, easier to script, cheaper to implement and run etc.
$100k is a lot of money, while it may be cheaper than buying lots of individual instances its still an insane amount of money to spend unnecessarily...
Oracle is just another example of overpriced proprietary software, that it's capable of running on linux is largely irrelevant, oracle want all the money going to them, not part of it going to the os vendor so it's in their interest to keep other costs to a minimum... incidentally, oracle can also run on windows and solaris which would have made it even more expensive.
Very few people will call themselves a linux/unix expert unless they really do know a lot about it...
People who do know a lot about unix typically know a fair bit about windows too...
People who know a lot about linux typically know other unixes (eg solaris) too...
People who know unix are more likely to have a general interest in computers as a whole.
By contrast...
Many people call themselves windows experts, based on various things ranging from having fixed his parents/friends computers, to having done an mcse course... Only a small percentage of them have any real in depth knowledge...
Many windows "experts", especially the less competent ones, don't know anything else and are resistant to learning it, even tho learning unix would make them more valuable.
Many people did an mcse course just to get a job and have no real interest in computing, they don't care to learn anything new and are only interested in the bare minimum to get paid... They have no pride in their work, and don't want to do their job well, they just want to achieve the minimum level to avoid being fired.
When you filter out the generally quite useless people, you will find that the number of good staff is similar for both windows and linux with a fair amount of overlap between the two... Most people with a genuine interest in computers will have tried various systems.
In several companies i've seen, the unix guys have to show the windows guys how to do some more complex things with windows... That's not a good sign, but it does go to show why the unix people cost more.
In a recent case i had to help several windows techs remove malware from an infected system... They were running an automated scanner which didn't detect it, but looking through the registry and the list of ie plugins quickly revealed there was certainly malware installed. Any semi competent windows admin should be able to do that! My responsibility is unix machines, i shouldn't be called in to remove malware from windows boxes because the people employed specifically to manage them fall to pieces when their automated tools fail.
And yes, they thought it was some kind of voodoo when i manually stripped the malware out of the registry, killed the processes and set permissions on the binaries so they could not be read or executed...
Really simple stuff, but the vast majority of windows guys i've seen rely totally on automated tools to do stuff like that, and have no idea how to do it manually.
Yes, but the people who made the choice to save money would be saving someone else's money which they couldn't care less about... And in response they would lose their personal backhanders from microsoft, which they do care about...
FOSS only means you're on your own because you haven't paid for support... You're on your own if you get free proprietary software (pirated) too, only the free OSS is actually legal.
You want support for OSS? Buy support from one of the many vendors who provide it. No, it's not free as in beer, free beer software is for technically competent people who don't require support from anyone else.
Support for OSS is actually a lot better than proprietary for a number of reasons...
Support is optional, you can have legal software for free without having to pay for anything, this is great for people who don't need support.
Proprietary software can only really be supported by it's original vendor, leaving a captive market where customers can be gouged... Anyone with a few competent staff can support OSS, there are plenty of vendors out there providing different levels of support for different prices... Shop around and take advantage of the market competition.
Only if you are a large important client with high level expensive support contracts.... If you are paying that much, you could get a better level of support from IBM, Sun or any one of a number of vendors... Or you could just hire some contract programmers to make changes for you. When your willing to throw enough money at the problem that MS would take notice, you would be able to get pretty much anything you wanted from OSS. Do you think MS would port any of their apps to linux if a large affluent customer demanded it? With OSS you have no such limitations, you could get pretty much anything done.
Because of the open nature of OSS it's possible for multiple vendors to provide high levels of support, including developer time, meaning the support becomes a competitive market in it's own right giving you more options, better service and lower prices.
How good are your small IT staff? Do none of them have some level of scripting/programming ability? It's pretty disturbing if they don't...
Yes, you can report the bug and hope for a patch, you can do the same with proprietary software...
But with OSS you are able to keep up with their progress of implementing your fixes, and you have the option of hiring a programmer to implement the fix if it's really important to you. Depending on the size of your company, hiring a contract programmer for a few weeks may work out cheaper than buying proprietary software.
OSS gives you choices that proprietary software doesn't offer you. So yes, it's better, because the worst case is that it's the same (in terms of getting bug fixes) but cheaper.
Most of those people who couldn't install ubuntu, couldn't install windows either (which is actually more difficult to install than ubuntu)... They will get computer repair shops to perform the install for them etc, or remain with the default install the machine came with.
So what's really needed, are more machines with linux preinstalled, priced considerably lower than windows ones...
And pc repair shops that know about linux and try to push it to their customers.... But this is unlikely to happen, because these shops make their money repairing broken windows installs, and linux would significantly decrease their revenue stream.
Strange, mine came with the english dictionary by default...
I also found that the spell check as you type in openoffice continues to work with large documents, whereas msword seems to turn it off after 100 pages or so.
12/140 is close to 10%, once you have a significant percentage market share compatibility becomes less of a problem because other companies wont like to be incompatible with 10% of other companies they deal with.
Have you tried the pdfimport plugin for openoffice 3?
It allows you to import pdf files and edit them, and then you can export them back out as pdf.
It works well for me, there is also an open source app called pdfedit but i've not tried that.
In the short term yes, but openoffice offers a number of long term advantages such as the freedom to choose what platform you run it on, the open file format by default, and when/if you want to update, whereas mso 2003 will become unsupported and no longer have security updates or compatibility with current versions.
Yes...
But what could work, is making a kind of hybrid system...
The game ships with windows and linux binaries on the same media (data files are shared) and also has a livecd mode which is there if you want it... For those games that already include a linux version, making a livecd that supports most current hardware wouldn't be much additional effort.
You would need agreement from nvidia and ati to distribute their drivers, currently they disallow redistribution. Once you cover all current ATI/Nvidia cards you're pretty much set, other cards simply arent designed for gaming.
Your comparison is also invalid, because your hardware could be radically different to his, and you weren't able to perform the ubuntu comparison to see if you got 100+ fps (as it should if it follows his example, assuming your machine is considerably more powerful to achieve 50fps under vista).
Incidentally there were other tests done a few months ago showing wine and xp outperforming vista by a considerable margin in many games.
On what hardware?
With linux, a distro specifically aimed at gaming could be created... One with a minimal interface (like the ones present on games consoles), rather than a bloated desktop environment, and nothing running in the background wasting cpu/mem...
There is a reason why the original xbox (celeron 700mhz, 64mb ram, geforce 3) can play games that would be uselessly unplayable on a windows machine of comparable spec.
A mix of both approaches works best...
System packages should follow the same basic structure, while user installed apps should be self contained within their own directory (and still have bin/lib/etc subdirs so you have order and structure...).
The windows approach is the worst of the lot, since you end up with lots of different types of files all lumped together in the windows and system32 directories.
Have a look at taspring (http://spring.clan-sy.com), that's a great open source game with a huge amount of user contributed mods and maps.
Making windows users jealous isn't going to work, because open source games will inevitably be ported sooner or later anyway.