Windows 2003 takes 5% away from Linux

ZuperDee writes "According to Netcraft, the number of Windows 2003 servers has doubled since July, and 5% were running Linux before, which is consistent with the trends they've been observing for some time. This doesn't look good for Linux, in my opinion. Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?"

On the other hand

[Eudial]

On the other hand, how many (desktop) Linux converts used to run Windows?

Re:Doh.

[kinnunen]

Also maybe someone should point out that Apache actually gained 0.54% relative market share in the past month, while Microsoft lost 0.21%. In fact, September 2003 looks like it was the Best month ever [netcraft.com] for Apache so far.

Re:Why worry?

[ihopMaintenance]

IMHO, if these viruses keep coming around, one is BOUND to attack 2003 servers. Then the 5%'ll feel bad and then revert back.

IMHO as a corporate IT director (and home Linux user), if Linux was:
a) easier to find quality support for
b) able to run more mission critical apps
I would use it in more places in my corporate network. (currently we use it for security and traffic monitoring). I know it is making strong headway, but it is not there yet. I am of course tempted to use it just to spite SCO, but that is not an entirely compelling business reason (the board does not accept your spiteful proposal).
Windows 2003 includes an incredible amount of changes bringing it more into the modular like world of Unix. It will displace some Linux I am sure. I am also sure that Linux will do something which will displace some Win 2K3 that is how this will go for a long while. BTW, understand what you quote about before you make a blatant quote like above. Most of the recent viruses attacked 2K3.

2003 server way better than other MS Offerings

[cOdEgUru]

IMHO, and for someone who has been running Windows 2003 server beta on a dev workstation for the last 9 months, I been extremely happy with it.

I have got tons of tools/utils that could bring an XP box to its knees and outright destroy the damn thing. 2003 server has so far been gracefully handling the pressure with no blue screens till last week.

Last week, I came across from first core dump when I was playing around with the Cisco VPN tool and it core dumped (it was due to bad drivers, couldnt find native ones) giving a BAD_POOL_CALLER error a bunch of times.

I thought Xp was way decent than the shitty 98SE and the unbelievably piece of crap ME, but 2003 server has proved that theres a lot of room for improvement. I think they still have a long way to go to capture the server market.

Disclaimer : I have been running a server operating system on a workstation, I admit. Theres guides available to tune the OS to make it run as a workstation and for gaming.

Also, Microsoft has finally shipped an OS with most of its services disabled (including sound) rather than running in to a "gotcha" moment down the line.

Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I belive that this stat is very missleading.

if you have a look at the current netcraft Survey you will see that is still making gains in the webhosting area.

the Stats (below) show taht Microsoft has LOST market share in the last month not gained. so how ever many moved from linux to Windows 2003.

Sites will change os from time to time as new developers take over new sites etc etc..
Developer August 2003 Percent September 2003 Percent Change
Apache 13325183 67.28 13371621 67.45 0.17
Microsoft 4839624 24.44 4804550 24.23 -0.21
Zeus 265011 1.34 266220 1.34 0.00
SunONE 213943 1.08 211234 1.07 -0.01
for the full report see:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/09/01 /septe mber_2003_web_server_survey.html

Re:Doh.

[RoLi]

The numbers:

Total installs: 43,144,374(100%)
Of those Windows2003: 185,000(0.4%)
Of those switched from Linux: ~ 9,500(0.002%)

In the meantime...

Apache runs: 27388860 (63.98%)
All IIS combined run: 10165745 (23.75%) (-5.42% compared to Sep2002, -3.70% compared to Apr2002)

Ridiculous Use of Statistics

[the eric conspiracy]

5% of What?

The netcraft web survey shows that there are about 42 million domains, 28 million of which are hosted on Apache systems, 10 million on Windows.

Of that 42 million, 325 thousand are now running Windows 2003. Of that 325 thousand, 5% were running Linux, or about 16 thousand. Now that 16 thousand actually accounts for a transition to Windows 2003 for 1 out of every 2,000 Apache domains.

What is doesn't show is what the overall change in Windows vs Apache is - in the same time frame that Windows 2003 was growing to 385,000 sites, Windows overall actually lost 3% domain share to Apache, or 1.2 million domains. So the transition of ex Apache sites to Server 2003 is equal to about 1% of the switch away from Windows to Apache that occurred during this same time period.

On a global basis Windows is losing market share to Apache based web serving at a rate 100 times greater than this supposed switch from Linux to Windows 2003.

Network Solutions Bailing on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

From: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_surve y.html [netcraft.com]

Following on from last month, Microsoft continued to lose sites as Network Solutions migrated the rest of their domain parking system back to Solaris from a Windows based system hosted at Interland. This is primarily responsible for Microsoft's 2.2% fall, with a net loss of 810,597 sites.

So, what was that again about Linux losing market share? Maybe it is actually going to Mac OS X!

Re:Its from .NET

[freeweed]

The original Pentium II was code-named "Klamath". It ran at a paltry 66 MHz bus speed and ranged from 233MHz to 300MHz. In 1998, Intel did some slight re-working of the processor and released "Deschutes". They used a 0.25 micron design technology for this one, and allowed a 100MHz system bus. The L2 cache was still separate from the actual processor core and still ran at only half speed. They would not rectify this issue until the release of the Celeron A and Pentium III. Deschutes ran from 333MHz to up to 450 MHz.

From A CPU History. Can't find anything decent on Intel's page.

You sure you're not using a K-6(-2)? Because unless Intel decided to arbitrarily cut their clockspeeds by half, they never released a 200Mhz Pentium 2. I thought this was common knowledge, just as the highest end Pentium 1 was 233Mhz. *shrug* Who knows, maybe it's a regional thing, like hot grits.

Re:Doh.

[pjrc]

Indeed, this happens all too often. About 4 years ago, I used to work at a small company which was acquired by a large giant. For several months, nothing really happened... until they broight in a new controller for accounting. Our company was smallish (about 100 people) and the controller was to be "in charge" of the computing. Perviously, nobody was really making global computing infrastructure decisions, and virtually all computing stuff was handled by a couple consultants. Of course, the new guy was a "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM... er, Microsoft", so he wanted everything migrated to a "standardized platform". At that point, the comany had 3 servers... one Windows NT, one Novell, and one Linux. The Linux machine didn't really do a lot (DNS, firewall, some other little stuff)... it was the Novell server which had been running for many years and was doing most of the heavy lifting. Likewise, the NT box ran a couple little databases (not the main one for accounting and manufacturing). Eventually, everything but the firewall migrated to Windows. It was expensive... they bought some very expensive hardware, but that was a minimal cost compared to the dozens of consultants who seemed to live on-site for easily a year, and the resulting dependance of having many more around permanently afterwards. Migrating to Microsoft Exchange was probably the most expensive part where it was a pure platform switch without new functionality. Massive money was also dumped into a new accounting package, but those things are always expensive and we'd limped along for a couple years before the company was sold... since the new owners would want us to use their software of choice (didn't actually turn out that way), and to keep a massive capital-draining software change off the books while negotiating the sale price. For a couple years, they were determined to replace that linux firewall/router with expensive Cisco equipment.... but it did some fancy things and despite their supposed certifications, they didn't really understand basic TCP/IP routing, subnets, etc (they knew some expensive gui-based firewall that dumbs down the whole process into pictures and drag-and-drop.... or at least that's my cynical view, believing that ipchains/iptables is pretty straightforward it you know what your subnets are). Windows won, and Linux and Novell lost, not because of cost or performance or any other real-world considerations. It was entirely due to the whim of a corporate guy they shoved into a position at a newly-acquired small company. However, in the matter of 16500 webservers switching from linux to win2003 (5% of something, but still only 16500 worldwide), these guys who "go with the trend" and want to "standardize" on whatever if fassionable (whatever Gartner is pushing)... they were probably not behind this. Those guys go with the older revs and rarely want to deploy the newest version. Too risky. I'd guess Microsoft "sold" win2003 to some high-profile hosting providers.

I wish it would stop being a hobby OS

[Overly Critical Guy]

I say this constantly and get modded down for it because I'm not supposed to criticize a "volunteer effort." That attitude right there is problem #1. I don't care if it's a volunteer effort, and neither do most users. We just care about what's sitting in front of us on our screen, the net output.

My point all along has been that people really need to get out of this hobbyist volunteer mindset and realize it's time to create actual results. There's no need to become corporate-minded slaves, but I do wish people would be more professional about things, from project names to interfaces to--and this is the major one--the ridiculous mindset, which you must admit, Slashdot contributes to on a daily basis (usually through "Microsoft hole" articles, when meanwhile my sig shows that distros have more exploits per month anyway...it's all ridiculous).

Professional people admit faults and correct them. We still have some of the same Linux desktop problems as we had five years ago, and people are still complaining about them. Heck, real professional people would zero in on problems before the users even notices them. Professional communities have friendly and courteous tech support, newsgroups, and so on. They have to, because it's all about the customer, i.e., the user. Linux has zealots, trolls, and fanboys. It's not all about the user when it comes to Linux. Mostly, it seems to be about adding enough cool features to be able to take great-looking screenshots for the back of distro boxes, but when you actually grab the mouse to use the thing, it is a disappointing experience (I still remember when GNOME under Red Hat 9 had a stuck taskbar that wouldn't stop moving around with the mouse, and when all else failed and I killed X, of course, that screwed up the boot sequence for some reason...and it was a completely stock install!).

I'm tired of Linux being a hobby OS. Let's face it, outside of the server market (where it is still considered an "alternative OS" despite the fact it has the slight majority), Linux is a hobby OS. The desktop environments are just attempts to SIMULATE a desktop. They don't feel like real, seamless, responsive desktops, but they are written to LOOK like real, responsive desktops, so that people can pretend that they're cool because they use Linux in that way. I wish someone would come out with something so slick and professional that people would have no choice but to switch because of its uber-coolness and usability. This, of course, would call for a complete rewrite, because it would demand things like hardware acceleration, a sane programming API, and so on. I won't hold my breath for it, though. As a matter of fact, the only real uber-cool thing I've seen is Slicker [slashdot.org]. Its card idea is unique and innovative. Too bad it's tied in with the godawful KDE, but maybe in another few years we'll see things really shine.

But I know that won't happen because people are too busy making yet another toolkit for X or another extension or another weird project with a weird name written all in lower-case on Sourceforge. Meanwhile, in August of 2005, Longhorn is due out, with hardware acceleration, vector-scaled widgets for resolution-independent resizing, a yet-to-be-revealed photorealistic user interface, and even the ability to add and remove RAM without rebooting. I'm sorry, but I don't see all that coming in two years, because two years ago I thought we'd have stuff like that, and two years before that, and so on. It just never comes. And if you request it and wish for it, you get flamed because you're not "doing it yourself." Sometimes it's really easy to despise this community because they refuse to listen unless you're some hero programmer like Linus or Stallman. If you're a user or designer, forget it.

Complaining about software

[crucini]

Tell them? The obvious replies are:

• The version you're running is more than five weeks old! Upgrade!
  
• You wouldn't have this problem if you were doing everything exactly like I do it.
  
• It's open source. Get hacking!
  

All perfectly valid, yet equivalent to "Go away".

Re:Doh.

[Sevn]

This reminds me of something....

I had a client recently that had a linksys router get fried and wanted to know if I could make an old pentium 133 his new router. This is what I did...

Took a freebsd 4.9-beta cd over to his house.
Put it in the cdrom drive.
Did the minimal install.
Visited the last minute options and set him a bizarre root password, disabled all services, and configured xl0 for DHCP and xl1 for a 192.160.x.x network.

Rebooted.
Set his bios to ignore all errors on boot.

Added this crap to his /etc/rc.conf:

gateway_enable="YES"
firewall_enable="YES"
fir ewall_type="OPEN"
natd_enable="YES"
natd_interfa ce="xl0"
natd_flags="-dynamic -s -m -u"

Rebooted.
Done. Took me a total of about 25 minutes.

The machine has no ports open so he'll never have to worry about anyone getting through it. He'll never have to update it. A machine that was sitting in his closet for 6 years was turned into a replacement router for a case of beer (my fee) in 25 minutes flat. I was going to use picobsd or a single floppy router of some sort, but he said he may want to do some other stuff down the road. Adding port redirects is a joke also. It can be accomplished by doing a man 8 natd and skipping a few paragraphs down. Once you know how it takes about 30 seconds to set one up.

Re:Jump ship?

[blixel]

Would you mind naming these software and hardware?

Sure. You readily admit to using RedHat 9 and KDE/Gnome so I guess it's safe to assume you're not a Linux elitist who will just debunk everything I say and dehumanize me.

Software (no particular order).

First, Waste. And before you say "the source code is available moron, so RTFM and just compile it yourself stupid." or "there is a Linux client you braindead idiot"; you should know I tried compiling it myself to no avail. I know very little about programming so at the first sign of problems with the compilation, I'm pretty much done. Computer programming isn't my career and I think it's unreasonable to expect an end user to have to become a computer programmer just to use a piece of software. Secondly, the Linux client that was made available by some guy who did know enough about programming to get it to compile is pretty useless. It still requires you to go into Windows to generate your keys and to get the waste config files in the format they need to be in - thereby defeating the "get me off of Windows" idea, and the client is completely stripped down. It can't do anything except serve files for download by remote users. You can't send files to anyone from your client, and no one can send files to you. So on that note, if you know of some other secure, private, P2P software like Waste that will actually run on Linux, I would certainly check it out. Has to be a Windows version also though. As shocking as this may be to Linux users, there are actually some people who just don't care about Operating Systems. So they tend to go with whatever O/S came installed on their system.

Next, Flight Simulator 2004. I've used X-Plane. It's alright, but I think Flight Simulator is better. I don't think X-Plane sucks by any means though.

A couple of friends and I recently started using Skype. There's no Linux version as far as I know. I would happily try some other VoIP program on Linux as long as there was a Windows version as well. There's no chance of me getting my mom on Linux. :)

[Insert name of game here] and there's probably an 80% or greater chance it won't run in Linux.

There are many more programs but I don't have all day to write and you probably won't even get this anyway. So I'll move on to hardware.

First thing that comes to mind is my iPod. The Linux support I've seen for the iPod has been pretty scarry.

My webcam. After 3 1/2 years of not working at all, Linux can finally interact with it. But the driver quality is really bad compared to the Windows driver.

No idea if my flight pedals and flight yoke would work in Linux even if there was a Linux version of Flight Simulator.

My all-in-one Fax/Scanner/Copier/Printer becomes an none-but-one device in Linux. The printer works, the rest don't. Although in my latest tinkerings with XSane, I was finally able to scan an image. But again, the driver quality is so lack luster that there's no way I can use it. I'm willing to "sacrifice" some ease of use for the greater good of Open Source, but there's a fine line between a little sacrifice and cruel and unusual punishment.

The list goes on - but since I doubt you'll read this anyway I'm not going to waste my time with anything more.

translation:

[jotaeleemeese]

I don't run GNU/linux because I'm lazy.

I love the politics and ideas behind the free software movement, but can be arsed to put my deeds where my heart lays.I enjoy not having to think what I do, that is why MS thinks for me.

Linux is at a disavantage becuse people act like herds. Or lemmings.Choice is intimidating. Give me back my fetal position inducing, womb-like user interface.

Another issue is that I am messy with controling my software and have not hear about Knoppix.

I am a Windows pirate, I am not a programmer, the Linux community should devote themselves to make Linux as niche as possible so neither your mom or the Man use the software.