Most important will be to see whether they offer it on the SAME IDENTICAL hardware configs that can run Windows.... XP or Vista. If they come up with a separate Linux-only hardware line, that would be a mere PR spin for Dell, a minor loss for Microsoft, and a major blow to the customer.
They're actually waiting for the next version of the ever-so-popular you-know.... GNU/Linux distribution. Although Greedy Gorilla would be a nice moniker for Vista....
It asks a very direct, simple, honest and logical question.... and it's been modded funny. I think Slashdot should simply BAN all articles / Slashvertisements on Vista until sanity prevails in the moderation system on these boards.
I can't get it to un-sleep properly either. I'll drop the lid and open it later and hit a few keys. 2 minutes later the screen is still black so I'll try to shut it down or start it up and I wind up holding the start button for 10 seconds to get anything to work...
In Vista, there are so many options to choose while putting your laptop to sleep. Next time DO NOT CHOOSE the 'Coma' option.
Even more interesting is that the first post on this thread is dated Nov 2006. Looks like this problem has been there since Jan 2007.... ie: ever since the release. Why is Slashdot so slow to highlight glaring defects in Vista?
have just started migrating their NT4.0 servers to Win2K.... thousands of them. One of my nephews is doing the troublesome mailbox migration, sitting in Bangalore.
I think MS counts corporate adoption through their so-called "Enterprise Service Agreements" as fresh sales... unless Corporates decide to junk all their existing hardware and invest in huge bloated pigs, Vista will not tak off. The barriers for Linux in the enterprise are crumbling day by day....
I say Linux adoption is happening at much more than twice the pace compared to the XP launch. And the pace is increasing day by day.
I can't understand why this isn't tagged dupe already... I seem to remember ZenOSS on/. a month or so ago... followed by an article on OpenNMS as well.
The parent post says Recommended Specs as well as Minimum specs, remember? Dell's specs would have you believe 512MB RAM is required just to boot the pig called Vista, without running games or apps! Many users have reported sloppy performance with 1GB of RAM and dozens of OEMs have recommended 4GB. MS still sticks to 1GB recommended and 512 MB minimum, however.
It's easy to see that the marketing machine at MS (aided and abetted by Slashdot shills) would like ALL users to upgrade to Vista... get hooked onto the so-called 'Wow' and then upgrade the hardware ad nauseum.
Right-thinking and serious users have gone tired of this duplicitous marketing, and rightly so!
when was the last time you bought games, applications or a Microsoft OS that performed decently at minimum or even recommended specs?
So you see nothing wrong in throwing more and more money at a habitual liar? Some of us aren't so rich or uncaring; besides we are instinctively suspicious when a company delivers a product way short of it's marketing build-up. We look elsewhere for our requirements, and for operating systems on new hardware for the Home segment, Ubuntu is more than adequate.
A rational person would draw the opposite conclusion: that they're confident in Vista sales numbers....
Microsoft seems confident that there are enough irrational people in the world to boost demand for an inferior, bloated product that lacks many promised features and requires 8 times more hardware to perform essentially the same functions.
You: I've not had any hardware incompatibilities so far but YMMV. The closest I've gotten to driver incompatibilities was one of the motherboards had an onboard Creative SB Live 5.1 chip. But a visit to Creative's website solved that, though it took some digging.
Once online, Creative's website told me that my sound card was a write-off. No Vista support would be forthcoming.
Grudgingly I ordered a new one. After installing it, the hardware error messages disappeared; the three different errors flagged up by Vista were all triggered by my old sound card.
Vista appears to have been engineered specifically to exclude the hobbyist market... or atleast discourage any experimenting on hardware.
There must be a lot of shareholders wondering whether it would have been better to just put the money in the bank and ride XP for longer. After all, anyone not buying Vista would still buy XP, so what motivates spending $5bn?
Which shareholder knows anything about technology or cares about technology-decisions made by s/w vendors? Every shareholder ought to be truly frightened when MS PAID Novell for the privilege of distributing Linux.
Except for the eye-candy, there is nothing new in Vista that's not already there in XP... all new supposed-to-be-included-features have been left out. I think that $5bn figure is just a smokescreen - Vista seems to be an attempt at excluding small-time hardware firms and the hobbyist home user who chooses to build his own PC.
And the big hardware firms like Dell are doing their best to prevent customers from experimenting with Linux on their hardware.
Selling Vista through retailers directly to customers does not seem to be Microsoft's strategy - unless XP is pulled out from the market, this segment of the market is unlikely to pick up. Indeed it appears MS and the major h/w vendors want to completely destroy the rest of the PC market - there seems to be no other explanation for Vista's shoddy hardware support and exorbitant retail pricing.
Indeed not buying Vista ever will save you the headaches of Windows just as never buying Tiger will save you the headaches of Mac and never buying Ubuntu will save you the headaches of Linux. However if everybody followed this advice then nobody would have an operating system.
Wrong conclusions. The PC market is unique in the sense the hardware is supposed to be standards-compliant and operating system - neutral; ie it is SUPPOSED to run ANY operating system. The big brand-name vendors are pushing pre-installed Vista on their hardware - but the 'assembled' market - which still remains a huge market, thankfully - has been shafted by the emergence of Vista. It's not worth the pain of pre-installing Vista on a white-box PC anymore.
For THOSE USERS who demand Windows on their custom-built PC, it's a definite advantage to simply install XP; for most home uses it's increasingly attractive to just bundle Ubuntu and get used to it.
I think the long term remedy is to ban Microsoft from releasing operating systems that do not include drivers for standards-compliant hardware devices such as video cards and network devices.... that way, the vibrant build-to-spec market will keep the large OEMs honest.
Not unless RIAA gives her some huge sum of money (> her attorney fees + $100000), and that's a whole different kind of precedent.
You could add a coupla' zeroes to that figure, and the RIAA might still settle outside court, if it precludes case-law being made. This case will make the law that the mere possession or proviioning of an ip-address does not mkae one guilty of copyright violations over that ip-address. Many IT firms and ISPs will breathe easy once the case-law is made.
This woman basically just kicked them in the nuts, hard. Good for her. Just like a good old fashioned kick in the nuts, you don't feel the 'real' pain immediately, for the benefit of those without nuts or experience in having them kicked.
Give us a youtube link, and we'll decide. Or is that covered by an RIAA copyright as well?
would case-law still be deemed to have been made? The only reason for dropping cases that aren't going favourably could be to avoid case-law being made.
Also, if merely providing internet access facilities to others makes one guilty of the uses / activities done on that IP, then many IT firms have reasons to be seriously worried. Malware and Service Packs are downloaded over the same IP and the same protocols. It will be almost impossible to operate any net-enabled firm at all.
Of all the products produced by MS, the only ones I care about being replaced with serious, 100% interoperable alternatives (any alternatives, not just open ones) are Exchange and Outlook. I'm effectively forced to use Outlook at work because of the calendaring, and I hate almost every second I have to use that sorry excuse for an email client...
What you care about isn't important (your low/. id doesn't count;-) What matters is what areas the EU considers MS to be a monopoly in; and the protocols necessary to be documented in order to have competition in those areas.
Except the Green Party, no other significant protest has been made when MS announced that Vista would require 1GB of RAM..... much much more than XP... and for little additional functionality; and lots of newer restrictions besides.
MS does not have a monopoly in Exchange or Office 2007; they need to open up protocols in prior versions of the OS, Office suite, browser, directory services etc. We could then have a competitor to Vista that ran off a PII with 64MB RAM. THAT would bring innovation and competition to the market.
From TFA: Microsoft is making key communications protocols available for license , so that third parties, including competitors, can link into the company's newest enterprise products...
The key communications protocols are the ones where Microsoft has a monopoly position... namely,
The protocols by which a Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000 PC joins and authenticates with the Domain Controller. NTFS, Active Drirectory, SMB etc. would be some other protocls of interest.
To my knowledge, Exchange Server, Share Point etc. are not areas of monopoly for Microsoft.
The article is plain WRONG. It might be some more PR spin by MS as usual, though. You want us to open up our protocols? Okay... here's how Dynamics CRM talks to SharePoint Portal! One thinks the EU inspectors will not be susceptible to such tricks.
Okay.... I'll resist the temptation to talk about chairs, and start taking Microsoft seriously. I'm a Linux user in some MS category, and a marketing team from MS has flown down to my office from Seattle. What next?
"I expect that for the next few weeks the majority of the "Linux community" will be on the floor foaming and making lame jokes about Bob and flying chairs.
Microsoft is taking you seriously now - you better start doing the same thing."
MS Team: We are very serious! Me: Shall I call an ambulance? MS Team: No no no.... we are very serious about you, a Linux user. Me: I see... take your chairs..... ooops take your seats and let's talk seriously. MS Team: We are serious about you. Which category Linux user are you? Me: I'm just a Linux user. MS Team: Are you an experimenter, follower, aficionado, transitioner or... Me: I'm just a normal Linux user. MS Team: Before we talk among ourselves in the presentation we must classify you. Why do you like Linux? Me: Because it works all the time, gets my work done, doesn't bother me with Genuine Updates. MS Team: But we are serious about security. Is Linux secure? Are you secure? Me: I'm very serious about my job security. I've been running this Linux server app for over 5 years, no problems till date... just user management and the odd feature upgrade. MS Team: We are serious about security. Did you know that the London stock exchange uses Windows Servers because of security? Me: How much did they pay for the servers? MS Team: We are serious about security. Hmm... let's see... just a few million quid... Me: My job will be gone if I bought your servers for 'security' reasons... what is this security you talk of? MS: We are serious about security... our server is so secure no one can break in... we'll be monitoring it ourselves to see nothing touches your server... only licensed signed applications will run... unlike your Linux box which runs everything. Me: Will it run my application? MS Team: We are serious about security. Have you got it certified by Verizon? Me: Nope... why should I certify MY program which I wrote with some XYZ comapny? MS Team: We are serious about security. How else can we know your app is not a virus? Me: But why would I write a virus on my own server? MS Team: We're serious about security. How do we know who wrote it? We've got to certify everything that runs on your server.... we're serious about security. Me: What if I perform some feature upgrades? Should those be certified as well? MS Team: We are serious about security. Every program has to be certified. Me: I'd be damned if I'm gonna send every bit of code to you guys for labelling. MS Team: We are serious about security. How else will you be secure? Me: Maybe because I believe in myself and my programming skills? MS Team: We are serious about security. Are you a certified programmer? Me: Nope.... but I'm sure each one of you is Certified.... idiots, that is. Now get the hell outta here and get yourselves certified again. Seriously! MS Team: We are serious about you, a Linux user. We are serious about security. Me: AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The MAJOR REASON why people experiment, adopt, adapt to, learn, or operate with Linux-based systems (not simply Linux, as the presentation simplifies it) is because of a lack of TRUSTWORTHINESS in Microsoft. And that lack of trust has come about because of Microsoft's duplicitous, confusing and often deliberately misguided marketing.
Lack of trust cannot be addressed by a few catchy, showy Powerpoint presentations or webcasts with some dulcet voices... and trying to 'classify' prospects into stupid 'categories'. How about this for a category? More than 90% of all 'Linux' users all share one common trait - they simply do not trust Microsoft anymore - how can the marketing machine address this issue?
Secondly, there are many 'efficiency and sufficiency' reasons for choosing Linux-based systems over Microsoft-based. In the MS world, the OS is linked with the browser is linked with the Office suite is linked with the CRM application is NOT LINKED with the telephony system - because MS probably hasn't seen a business case for telephony yet. Now, a company that wishes to implement CRM would choose to build it's own or outsource the development to knowing folks, based on the 'open platform' where the philosophy is to make things so they connect to other things without obfuscation.
That, I believe is a HUGE segment, and one in which MS has no convincing long-term answer. Will your Exchange Server that you sold me 3 years ago work with the Dynamics CRM system you're selling me now? And will BOTH work with the new Server version you're forcing on me this year, or should I upgrade all these apps and pray nothing breaks? What about the BI system I'm looking at - 3 years from now? Will I be forced to adopt the MS format - OOXML and get further locked onto your other offerings, and lack thereof?
People do not use just 'Linux' like MS is characterising and classifying them - it's not the Desktop where the Big Fight is taking place - it's in the server space. Replacing Active Directory with Enterprise Directory Services from RedHat is the only step many companies have to take... in order to migrate the entire infrastructure to the Open 'Linux' way.
And marketing cannot solve the technical deficiencies.
the business case for Open Source Software in the enterprise market is already well established. Some reasons: 1. The average IQ of the 'EDP Manager'.... (or should I say IQ of the average EDP Manager) seems much higher than elsewhere... so he can't be fooled forever. 2. Closed source software is so very expensive, enterprises choose to build their own systems; and they mostly choose J2EE and Eclipse. The LAMP stack is packing up with amazing velocity as well. ROI can be seen in a single year, with many apps. 3. Not much of lock-in has occured already - very few companies have data locked in.doc formats... not many firms have BI or Analytics... so leap-frogging ain't a big issue. 4. The hardware specs are roughly 10% in the OSS space.... and that matters a lot as well. and lately: 5. It is getting more and more cumbersome pirating Closed source s/w - be it OSes, Office, SQL or whatever. Most EDP mgrs over here have been on the same company for a decade on average; and they're pretty amazed at what OSS can do.
A recent Java conference (paid, mind you) had over 10,000 attendees! RedHat is doing very well... not many people know or care about Novell... many state govts. have mandated and stipulated Open Source specs...
Somehow, people this part of the world do not seem to wait for Gartner reports or NYT articles before experimenting with OSS.
Slashdot Mirror
Most important will be to see whether they offer it on the SAME IDENTICAL hardware configs that can run Windows.... XP or Vista. If they come up with a separate Linux-only hardware line, that would be a mere PR spin for Dell, a minor loss for Microsoft, and a major blow to the customer.
They're actually waiting for the next version of the ever-so-popular you-know.... GNU/Linux distribution. Although Greedy Gorilla would be a nice moniker for Vista....
Why is the parent modded +5 Funny?
It asks a very direct, simple, honest and logical question.... and it's been modded funny. I think Slashdot should simply BAN all articles / Slashvertisements on Vista until sanity prevails in the moderation system on these boards.
I can't get it to un-sleep properly either. I'll drop the lid and open it later and hit a few keys. 2 minutes later the screen is still black so I'll try to shut it down or start it up and I wind up holding the start button for 10 seconds to get anything to work...
In Vista, there are so many options to choose while putting your laptop to sleep. Next time DO NOT CHOOSE the 'Coma' option.
Even more interesting is that the first post on this thread is dated Nov 2006. Looks like this problem has been there since Jan 2007.... ie: ever since the release. Why is Slashdot so slow to highlight glaring defects in Vista?
For very very basic functionality?
What is Vista doing? Factoring large primes in 640KB RAM?
have just started migrating their NT4.0 servers to Win2K.... thousands of them. One of my nephews is doing the troublesome mailbox migration, sitting in Bangalore.
I think MS counts corporate adoption through their so-called "Enterprise Service Agreements" as fresh sales... unless Corporates decide to junk all their existing hardware and invest in huge bloated pigs, Vista will not tak off. The barriers for Linux in the enterprise are crumbling day by day....
I say Linux adoption is happening at much more than twice the pace compared to the XP launch. And the pace is increasing day by day.
I can't understand why this isn't tagged dupe already... I seem to remember ZenOSS on /. a month or so ago... followed by an article on OpenNMS as well.
3 3
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/23/00322
I think Vista has broken most commercial network mgmnt offerings... nothing else can explain these dupes!
The parent post says Recommended Specs as well as Minimum specs, remember? Dell's specs would have you believe 512MB RAM is required just to boot the pig called Vista, without running games or apps! Many users have reported sloppy performance with 1GB of RAM and dozens of OEMs have recommended 4GB. MS still sticks to 1GB recommended and 512 MB minimum, however.
It's easy to see that the marketing machine at MS (aided and abetted by Slashdot shills) would like ALL users to upgrade to Vista... get hooked onto the so-called 'Wow' and then upgrade the hardware ad nauseum.
Right-thinking and serious users have gone tired of this duplicitous marketing, and rightly so!
when was the last time you bought games, applications or a Microsoft OS that performed decently at minimum or even recommended specs?
So you see nothing wrong in throwing more and more money at a habitual liar? Some of us aren't so rich or uncaring; besides we are instinctively suspicious when a company delivers a product way short of it's marketing build-up. We look elsewhere for our requirements, and for operating systems on new hardware for the Home segment, Ubuntu is more than adequate.
A rational person would draw the opposite conclusion: that they're confident in Vista sales numbers....
Microsoft seems confident that there are enough irrational people in the world to boost demand for an inferior, bloated product that lacks many promised features and requires 8 times more hardware to perform essentially the same functions.
Whom should we believe - you or a BBC reporter?
You: I've not had any hardware incompatibilities so far but YMMV. The closest I've gotten to driver incompatibilities was one of the motherboards had an onboard Creative SB Live 5.1 chip. But a visit to Creative's website solved that, though it took some digging.
BBC reporter:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6407419.stm
Once online, Creative's website told me that my sound card was a write-off. No Vista support would be forthcoming.
Grudgingly I ordered a new one. After installing it, the hardware error messages disappeared; the three different errors flagged up by Vista were all triggered by my old sound card.
Vista appears to have been engineered specifically to exclude the hobbyist market... or atleast discourage any experimenting on hardware.
There must be a lot of shareholders wondering whether it would have been better to just put the money in the bank and ride XP for longer. After all, anyone not buying Vista would still buy XP, so what motivates spending $5bn?
Which shareholder knows anything about technology or cares about technology-decisions made by s/w vendors? Every shareholder ought to be truly frightened when MS PAID Novell for the privilege of distributing Linux.
Except for the eye-candy, there is nothing new in Vista that's not already there in XP... all new supposed-to-be-included-features have been left out. I think that $5bn figure is just a smokescreen - Vista seems to be an attempt at excluding small-time hardware firms and the hobbyist home user who chooses to build his own PC.
And the big hardware firms like Dell are doing their best to prevent customers from experimenting with Linux on their hardware.
Selling Vista through retailers directly to customers does not seem to be Microsoft's strategy - unless XP is pulled out from the market, this segment of the market is unlikely to pick up. Indeed it appears MS and the major h/w vendors want to completely destroy the rest of the PC market - there seems to be no other explanation for Vista's shoddy hardware support and exorbitant retail pricing.
Indeed not buying Vista ever will save you the headaches of Windows just as never buying Tiger will save you the headaches of Mac and never buying Ubuntu will save you the headaches of Linux. However if everybody followed this advice then nobody would have an operating system.
Wrong conclusions. The PC market is unique in the sense the hardware is supposed to be standards-compliant and operating system - neutral; ie it is SUPPOSED to run ANY operating system. The big brand-name vendors are pushing pre-installed Vista on their hardware - but the 'assembled' market - which still remains a huge market, thankfully - has been shafted by the emergence of Vista. It's not worth the pain of pre-installing Vista on a white-box PC anymore.
For THOSE USERS who demand Windows on their custom-built PC, it's a definite advantage to simply install XP; for most home uses it's increasingly attractive to just bundle Ubuntu and get used to it.
I think the long term remedy is to ban Microsoft from releasing operating systems that do not include drivers for standards-compliant hardware devices such as video cards and network devices.... that way, the vibrant build-to-spec market will keep the large OEMs honest.
Not unless RIAA gives her some huge sum of money (> her attorney fees + $100000), and that's a whole different kind of precedent.
You could add a coupla' zeroes to that figure, and the RIAA might still settle outside court, if it precludes case-law being made. This case will make the law that the mere possession or proviioning of an ip-address does not mkae one guilty of copyright violations over that ip-address. Many IT firms and ISPs will breathe easy once the case-law is made.
This woman basically just kicked them in the nuts, hard. Good for her. Just like a good old fashioned kick in the nuts, you don't feel the 'real' pain immediately, for the benefit of those without nuts or experience in having them kicked.
Give us a youtube link, and we'll decide. Or is that covered by an RIAA copyright as well?
would case-law still be deemed to have been made? The only reason for dropping cases that aren't going favourably could be to avoid case-law being made.
Also, if merely providing internet access facilities to others makes one guilty of the uses / activities done on that IP, then many IT firms have reasons to be seriously worried. Malware and Service Packs are downloaded over the same IP and the same protocols. It will be almost impossible to operate any net-enabled firm at all.
Of all the products produced by MS, the only ones I care about being replaced with serious, 100% interoperable alternatives (any alternatives, not just open ones) are Exchange and Outlook. I'm effectively forced to use Outlook at work because of the calendaring, and I hate almost every second I have to use that sorry excuse for an email client...
/. id doesn't count ;-) What matters is what areas the EU considers MS to be a monopoly in; and the protocols necessary to be documented in order to have competition in those areas.
..... much much more than XP... and for little additional functionality; and lots of newer restrictions besides.
What you care about isn't important (your low
Except the Green Party, no other significant protest has been made when MS announced that Vista would require 1GB of RAM
MS does not have a monopoly in Exchange or Office 2007; they need to open up protocols in prior versions of the OS, Office suite, browser, directory services etc. We could then have a competitor to Vista that ran off a PII with 64MB RAM. THAT would bring innovation and competition to the market.
From TFA: Microsoft is making key communications protocols available for license , so that third parties, including competitors, can link into the company's newest enterprise products...
The key communications protocols are the ones where Microsoft has a monopoly position... namely,
The protocols by which a Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000 PC joins and authenticates with the Domain Controller.
NTFS, Active Drirectory, SMB etc. would be some other protocls of interest.
To my knowledge, Exchange Server, Share Point etc. are not areas of monopoly for Microsoft.
The article is plain WRONG. It might be some more PR spin by MS as usual, though. You want us to open up our protocols? Okay... here's how Dynamics CRM talks to SharePoint Portal! One thinks the EU inspectors will not be susceptible to such tricks.
The DMCA is also a pedantic, pathetic attempt at social engineering. The error is netiher minor nor unimportant.
Okay.... I'll resist the temptation to talk about chairs, and start taking Microsoft seriously. I'm a Linux user in some MS category, and a marketing team from MS has flown down to my office from Seattle. What next?
H HH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"I expect that for the next few weeks the majority of the "Linux community" will be on the floor foaming and making lame jokes about Bob and flying chairs.
Microsoft is taking you seriously now - you better start doing the same thing."
MS Team: We are very serious!
Me: Shall I call an ambulance?
MS Team: No no no.... we are very serious about you, a Linux user.
Me: I see... take your chairs..... ooops take your seats and let's talk seriously.
MS Team: We are serious about you. Which category Linux user are you?
Me: I'm just a Linux user.
MS Team: Are you an experimenter, follower, aficionado, transitioner or...
Me: I'm just a normal Linux user.
MS Team: Before we talk among ourselves in the presentation we must classify you. Why do you like Linux?
Me: Because it works all the time, gets my work done, doesn't bother me with Genuine Updates.
MS Team: But we are serious about security. Is Linux secure? Are you secure?
Me: I'm very serious about my job security. I've been running this Linux server app for over 5 years, no problems till date... just user management and the odd feature upgrade.
MS Team: We are serious about security. Did you know that the London stock exchange uses Windows Servers because of security?
Me: How much did they pay for the servers?
MS Team: We are serious about security. Hmm... let's see... just a few million quid...
Me: My job will be gone if I bought your servers for 'security' reasons... what is this security you talk of?
MS: We are serious about security... our server is so secure no one can break in... we'll be monitoring it ourselves to see nothing touches your server... only licensed signed applications will run... unlike your Linux box which runs everything.
Me: Will it run my application?
MS Team: We are serious about security. Have you got it certified by Verizon?
Me: Nope... why should I certify MY program which I wrote with some XYZ comapny?
MS Team: We are serious about security. How else can we know your app is not a virus?
Me: But why would I write a virus on my own server?
MS Team: We're serious about security. How do we know who wrote it? We've got to certify everything that runs on your server.... we're serious about security.
Me: What if I perform some feature upgrades? Should those be certified as well?
MS Team: We are serious about security. Every program has to be certified.
Me: I'd be damned if I'm gonna send every bit of code to you guys for labelling.
MS Team: We are serious about security. How else will you be secure?
Me: Maybe because I believe in myself and my programming skills?
MS Team: We are serious about security. Are you a certified programmer?
Me: Nope.... but I'm sure each one of you is Certified.... idiots, that is. Now get the hell outta here and get yourselves certified again. Seriously!
MS Team: We are serious about you, a Linux user. We are serious about security.
Me: AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
The MAJOR REASON why people experiment, adopt, adapt to, learn, or operate with Linux-based systems (not simply Linux, as the presentation simplifies it) is because of a lack of TRUSTWORTHINESS in Microsoft. And that lack of trust has come about because of Microsoft's duplicitous, confusing and often deliberately misguided marketing.
Lack of trust cannot be addressed by a few catchy, showy Powerpoint presentations or webcasts with some dulcet voices... and trying to 'classify' prospects into stupid 'categories'. How about this for a category? More than 90% of all 'Linux' users all share one common trait - they simply do not trust Microsoft anymore - how can the marketing machine address this issue?
Secondly, there are many 'efficiency and sufficiency' reasons for choosing Linux-based systems over Microsoft-based. In the MS world, the OS is linked with the browser is linked with the Office suite is linked with the CRM application is NOT LINKED with the telephony system - because MS probably hasn't seen a business case for telephony yet. Now, a company that wishes to implement CRM would choose to build it's own or outsource the development to knowing folks, based on the 'open platform' where the philosophy is to make things so they connect to other things without obfuscation.
That, I believe is a HUGE segment, and one in which MS has no convincing long-term answer. Will your Exchange Server that you sold me 3 years ago work with the Dynamics CRM system you're selling me now? And will BOTH work with the new Server version you're forcing on me this year, or should I upgrade all these apps and pray nothing breaks? What about the BI system I'm looking at - 3 years from now? Will I be forced to adopt the MS format - OOXML and get further locked onto your other offerings, and lack thereof?
People do not use just 'Linux' like MS is characterising and classifying them - it's not the Desktop where the Big Fight is taking place - it's in the server space. Replacing Active Directory with Enterprise Directory Services from RedHat is the only step many companies have to take... in order to migrate the entire infrastructure to the Open 'Linux' way.
And marketing cannot solve the technical deficiencies.
the business case for Open Source Software in the enterprise market is already well established. Some reasons: .... (or should I say IQ of the average EDP Manager) seems much higher than elsewhere... so he can't be fooled forever. .doc formats... not many firms have BI or Analytics... so leap-frogging ain't a big issue.
1. The average IQ of the 'EDP Manager'
2. Closed source software is so very expensive, enterprises choose to build their own systems; and they mostly choose J2EE and Eclipse. The LAMP stack is packing up with amazing velocity as well. ROI can be seen in a single year, with many apps.
3. Not much of lock-in has occured already - very few companies have data locked in
4. The hardware specs are roughly 10% in the OSS space.... and that matters a lot as well.
and lately:
5. It is getting more and more cumbersome pirating Closed source s/w - be it OSes, Office, SQL or whatever. Most EDP mgrs over here have been on the same company for a decade on average; and they're pretty amazed at what OSS can do.
A recent Java conference (paid, mind you) had over 10,000 attendees! RedHat is doing very well... not many people know or care about Novell... many state govts. have mandated and stipulated Open Source specs...
Somehow, people this part of the world do not seem to wait for Gartner reports or NYT articles before experimenting with OSS.
It appears you are angry and agitated. Here, take this chair!
8-times more hardware, eh? And where'd you pull that number? Out of your ass?
m needs.htmm mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011523
Thought so.
My ass doesn't run Vista yet, sorry.
Any sysad will tell you XP needs 512MB RAM; and reports on Vista indicate the beast needs 4GB RAM to run as fast as XP. Any fool that doesn't have his head in his ass will tell you 4GB is 8 times 512MB.
XP sweet spot is 512MB: http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/computing/windows/ra
Vista sweet spot is 4GB http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co