🚀 go-pugleaf

Wed, 4 Dec 2002 04:26 am will from hence forward be known as the day Rowland 
Croucher blabbered:

> Windows costs less than Linux. A bit. Sometimes - MS study
> By John Lettice
> Posted: 03/12/2002 at 13:38 GMT

After reading this entire report, MSFT preety much paid for someone to waffle
on and make things up to make them look good. *whats* *new* ?

> Windows 2000 servers are cheaper to run than Linux ones, sometimes, says an
> IDC study which was by strange coincidence sponsored by Microsoft. The
> study will come as welcome relief to Microsoft salespeople who have been
> parroting the 'cheaper than Linux' line to general disbelief, but whether
> anyone else will believe it is another matter.

In the server world hardware can all but be negated as the costs will be the
same, therefore we should really only be dealing with software costs. Now its
fairly obvious which is cheaper here.

> However, erm, correct us if we're wrong but we were under the impression
> that obstinate corporate customers who hung onto their Windows servers for
> a whole five years without upgrading were more or less open source loving
> commies in the eyes of Redmond. We haven't as yet seen the full study, but

While in esscence that makes sense, it isnt true. The companies would have to
have paid for some MSFT support / maintenance at some point in 5 years. It is
inevitable with Windows.

> suspect software upgrade costs, and the associated cost of new hardware
> during the period, may not have been entirely factored in to the Windows
> 2000 server tab. Linux can have similar upgrade cycles if you want it to,
> but there is really no similar hardware upgrade imperative if you do decide
> to move up a version.

Of course it hasnt been factored the whole IDC report is a "pat-on-the-back" 
for MFST with no intention of portraying the entire truth.
 
> Aside from that, the study looks maybe a little stacked in other areas. It
> finds the support and staffing costs for Linux are greater, largely because
> Linux systems are more difficult to configure, manage and support than
> Windows ones, this itself being because Windows has more mature, easy to
> use management tools.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! More difficult to configure?
It is my experience with windows systems that you set something up, reboot,
change another setting, reboot, find out that the first change you made isnt 
right even though you followed the book perfectly, change it again, reboot, 
find that the change didnt occur, do it again, reboot .....

This cycle goes on and on.

Linux: Issue a command from bash, or open the GUI config tool. Make all the
changes you want. Restart the services effected.... 

Hmmm maybe a total of FOUR actions.

> Which from a certain perspective, i.e. a Windows network manager's
> perspective, is true.Large-scale, properly set up Windows networks with a

That's because they're brainwashed. See above.

> ton of hardware and GUI management tools all over the shop needn't cost a
> lot in terms of machine minders, whereas an open source network without
> these tools will need the requisite number of skilled geeks making
> incantations over bash prompts. But this is comparing apples and pears, the
> geeks will serve you better than the deskilled machine minders when
> something goes badly wrong (which it will). In any event we doubt the
> smooth-running easily-managed Windows network actually exists anywhere
> outside of slideware.

It doesnt take a geek to use Windows GUI config tools.
Therefore: It doesnt take a geek to use Linux GUI config tools.

These two simple statements preety much anul the entire IDC report, because 
they have based the entire costing differences on the fact that only geeks
can setup and configure linux, and that you need more than one to do it.

Why, if you have a single network server running linux, do you need more than
one SysAdmin?????

-- 
remember this is the sequence of events, in no particular order

Registered Linux User 282072
<www.volutin.net -- everything irrelevant>