Windows 2003 takes 5% away from Linux 873
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?"
Jump ship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article heading is rather misleading. It's not like 5% of all Linux servers converted to Windows Server 2003, or 5% of all servers in the world suddenly run Windows Server 2003. No, of all new Windows Server 2003 installations (which still isn't that many), five percent used to run Linux. It is definitely not time to "think about jumping ship" yet...
/* Steinar */
Why worry? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time (and trial and error).
Re:Jump ship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm... -1 Flamebait in the story summary?
SCO Suit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps some Linux servers were deployed which were destined to be replaced once Win2003 was released, like as an interim measure. Personally, I think anybody running a website on anything other than Apache on some *nix like OS should be shot. IIS... ugh .
Jump ship? Never (Score:3, Insightful)
What bollocks. Linux's worth as a server is not judged by its popularity, or its market share. It is, however, judged by how well it performs as a web server, and as a matter of fact it performs very well.
Uhhm, so companies are trying out the new (Score:5, Insightful)
If MS new server is a good product, then it should keep the 5% and grow. If it doesn't live up to the hype (replacing 200 servers with 20, saving millions of dollars per annum), its marketshare will dissappear. Initial cost doesn't figure entirely into this either. The software costs for some customers have been subsidised by Bill, and the hardware costs for the upgrades are both minimal, and bugetted because some equipment is becoming EOL'ed by companies three-year plans.
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The heading should read "Only 5% of Windows Server 2003 users switched from Linux."
Its still new... (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides if SCO didnt convince you to jump ship yet (we cant afford 700$ per copy can you?) then your a lifer!
Hey SCO I guess that means im using the WaReZ copy of linux!
Microsoft's way with maths... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the Microsoft spin doctors do not mention is the continuing market share loss to Apache overall [netcraft.com].
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Insightful)
185K total servers? (Score:3, Insightful)
To extrapolate anything from 185K installs is silly.
Further, the opposite statistic should be considered...the number of Win 98, Win NT, Win 2000, and Win XP boxes being converted to Linux. I'm pretty sure the rate will end up much higher than 5%. ;-) And that will be applied to the hundreds of millions of existing machines out there.
Certainly not time to cut and run, Taco. :-P
(Maybe I should set my house on fire today...nah.)
Re:Doh. (Score:2, Insightful)
This article is flamebait. (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare that to all those upgrading _to_ linux, and look how many of those were previously running other versions of windows? It could easily by a lot more than 5%.
This all looks like a pretty desperate attempt to discredit linux and make win 2003 look more popular than it really is.
Oh, and it's old news anyway.
Re:Doh. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's amazing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 2003 does so badly that it runs only about 0.4% of webservers half a year after release.
Overall IIS loses about 0.2%/month to other webservers.
And now 8500 domains (= 0.002% !) throughout about half a year (= 0.0003%/month) switch from Linux to Windows and people start to get wet their pants.
And then the FUD gets modded as insightful...
Looks like nobody has their Sarcasm Sensor working (Score:3, Insightful)
This is similar to newpapers in China quoting articles from the Onion as the truth.
Must be attributable to hangovers!
Re:Its from .NET (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe machines that were previously home rolled were replaced by machines managed centrally by MS happy IT departments. Maybe people changed the consultant who runs the server. Maybe a new PHB came in who loves MS.
Some people will always be leaving Linux, it means nothing.
Re: Doh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, they mention the number of Linux sites stolen by Windows, but never not the number of Windows sites stolen by Linux. Does that mean that none were stolen, or is Netcraft just another Gartner-style FUD-for-pay enterprise?
Numbers don't lie, but data scummers certainly do. Let's see how this trend turns out in the long run.
The CEO View Changes, But Slowly. (Score:3, Insightful)
My CEO has known for a long time that I'm an Open Source advocate, and he expresses interest in getting away from Microsoft. He enjoys seeing what I can do with Linux and older hardware that would otherwise be mothballed, and he even consented to purchasing Redhat ES 2.1 at full fare recently. He has been amazed at the uptimes achieved on "worn out" servers running various flavors of Linux.
At the conference, our core processing company briefly touched on Open Source software and the remote possibility that they might, one day, port their software to, say, Linux. At lunch that day, I listened closely as various CEO's, CIO's, and other higher-ups discussed this possibility. Overall, I am sad to say that the overwhelming reaction was one of disbelief and/or fear. I saw clearly that Linux is still considered by many, if not most executives, to be unproven and unsupported technology. The same people who speak disparagingly of the Microsoft monopoly and the high cost of proprietary software still would rather pay ransom than go into uncharted waters. Those having a more technical understanding were quick to point out that Linux still does not scale as true enterprise-OSes are expected to. These people expressed the view that, while such Open Source software as Linux and MySQL were "interesting" and "have potential," no one was remotely interested in seeing their core software ported to a non-proprietary operating system.
I came away feeling a little depressed, but I resolved to continue, one server at a time, showing my CEO what Linux, Apache, PHP, Open Office, etc., can do and ARE already doing. Those of us who advise executives MUST continue with this kind of approach if we want to see better software running on our core servers.
Apache != Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Using Apache just demonstrates what a great product Apache is. It has nothing to do with Linux. I'm not going to abandon the simplicity and stability of Win2K just because Apache can faithfully serve up HTTP requests.
Nobody is debating that IIS is feature bloated hacker friendly piece of garbage. But that has nothing to do with Windows.
I have better things to do with my time (like actually building up the web-site) than dicking around with an OS.
The high quality of one open source product has zero to do with the quality of another.
Ben
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so we have established that there is a switch back rate. Its not that surprising. People try linux, then go back to microsoft for a variety of reasons, such as they discovered they were locked into windows and couldn't change over at that point.
To really make sense of the statistics, you also need to compare that to the rate of those who are using windows who now use linux.
Knowing only one statistic doesn't let you work out anything much.
Michael
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I'll call. (Score:5, Insightful)
> I don't use Linux because it's an unneccessary pain in the ass to do things with it.
Maybe this would be a good time to get specific about what's hard to do on Linux when you're using it for your Web server.
Re:Doh. (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll probably get modded down for this, but...
With less than 1% of the overall market, Linux has failed.
You Linux people aren't very receptive to criticism, yet you think that it's OK to talk shit about Windows?
It's called sarcasm, you dolts (Score:4, Insightful)
A piddlingly small percentage of the even more pathetic percentage of sites that chose to try .Not ... er, I mean 2003 Server, we previously using Linux. The meat of the story (such as it is) is that so few sites are even bothering to try 2003 Server.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the story behind the switches from Linux to .Not are mostly cases where a company had their site done by a hosting service (who, sensibly, used Linux) that had grown enough that some twit manager decided they should bring their web presence "in house". Their internal IS people only know Windows, so their obvious choice was 2003 Server (it being perhaps the least bad of the Microsoft stable of shite).
<sigh>
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a LOT of geekisms that simply HAVE to be weeded out of Linux if it's going to be more widely popular. I know, every open-source programmer LOVES to give their project a cute acronym for a name. But they are often completely non-descriptive and even confusing for a user.
Imagine installing Linux for your mother or grandmother, and right there on the desktop is a big icon that says THE GIMP. ... Riiiiight.
Also, while choice is a good thing for geeks, a Linux install that dumps hundreds and hundreds of programs on the computer is just going to overwhelm a newbie. I think Linux installers should have two user modes selectable upon installation, Basic and Advanced. (with Basic having a big SELECT THIS IF YOU'RE NEW TO LINUX on it) Advanced does the usual 2-gig program dump we're all used to, with all the usual options about Gnome or KDE and all that. Basic goes through and pre-selects everything for the user. Arbitrarily picks a desktop, and then installs *1* example of each type of application with a clear, understandable name.
I know Linux people are highly resistant to the idea of forcing program choices on users, but your Average Joe just isn't up to coping with that much information being dumped on them at once. He wants one big button that says "Word Processor" he can click on.
But anyway, things like that. That's where, I think, Linux needs to focus now - getting away from the geekiness and being more accessible to normal users.
Re:Jump ship? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm in that same boat. I use XP Pro for the O/S but try to use Open Source alternatives wherever else I can. Open Office and Mozilla Firebird the most noteworthy I guess.
Why not just use RedHat or something? Well, it's not like I haven't tried. I have been tinkering with running Linux on the Desktop since about 1997 or 1998. It has definietly come along way, but like you read in so many articles on this top, it's just "not there yet."
I do have RH9 installed on another machine but it always comes back to the same thing. Some program I need/want doesn't exist for Linux or some hardware that I use won't work, or at best works very poorly.
Re:Apache != Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Rubbish. That's like saying the quality and landscaping of one house in a neighborhood has zero to do with the quality and landscaping of its neighbors. The reality is that the quality of Apache does say a lot about what one should be able to expect from Open Source.
Nobody is debating that IIS is feature bloated hacker friendly piece of garbage. But that has nothing to do with Windows.
Comes from the same neighborhood.
Amazing (Score:1, Insightful)
A single story about a single company moving from Windows to Linux warrants a few hundred messages in the vein of "This is it, Windows is dying, Linux is king" but a story that goes the other way is immediately "Poor journalism", "The figures are wrong", "It's troll bait".
It's this lack of attention to THE REAL WORLD that has already doomed Linux to a niche market a la Mac.
God's sakes... you people are pathetic.
Re:Apache != Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
i do not get it. I do not understand its power and capabilities.
Being a (relatively) long time Linux user, I can tell you this comment is just Zealotism (Linux elitisism). And that type of attitude is what drives people away from Linux in the first place. It's really getting old and if you would like to see Linux improve, you need to come down off your high horse and realize that not everyone is as interested in the details of the Operating System as you are. A lot of people just want the O/S to work. And the funny thing is, so do all the Linux Zealots. Every time something new and grand happens with the Linux kernel, all the Zealots come flying out of the woodwork to praise how mighty and wonderful Linux is. Funny how that when Windows or Mac OS brought in that same feature 4 or 5 years ago that all those same people laughed about how dumb and needless it was. The hypocracy with you Linux Zealots is truly pathetic.
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Insightful)
> Linux desperately NEEDS more people looking at it from a marketing perspective,
Why? What's the quantifiable benefit to me and thee of Mom and Pop Inc choosing a linux server rather than Win2003?
I think you may be confusing the benefits of having more linux developers and having more linux users.
Re:Win2kPro Easier? Come On! (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows doesn't support secure remote shells (Out of the box), but it certainly has remote admin capabilities. In some ways (RDC especially) they are better than anything Linux has, in others (MMC), I'll take SSH and vi instead.
Re:Doh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the politics and ideas behind the free software movement, I think its an incredibly important issue. I've just been running my Win2000 system for 2 years, have got it set up pretty much exactly to my liking, have my neuro-system accostomed to accomplishing everything i want to accomplish without having to think about it. Know how to use all the applications I use without having to think about it. And really dont have any problems with instability (except trying to access a CD with a scratch on it, fucking I cant believe my CDRom can crash my computer)
My experiances with linux (I set up an old PII i had to be a router/nat box on my home network) proved to be somewhat of a bitch. Yes, it was usually possible to get what I wanted to get accomplished , but it was just a pain in the ass. I spent probably about 3 weeks trying to figure out how to get port forwarding to work (i wound up downgrading my kernel)
Linux has an inherant disadvantage to Windows because of the current proprietary nature of the computer industry. End users want their computers to work with the applications that they have been using, and their friends are using, and have them have all the features that the windows versions have. I am incredibly impressed and amazed by the community's ability to reverse engineer these protocols and drivers, but the fact is, I KNOW that if I switch over the GNU/linux, I'm going to be spending a bunch of time figuring out how to get various things working that I currently take for granted.
Gnu/Linux is also incredibly intimdating in regards to the vast amount of choice you are given. Picking a distrobution, picking what desktop you want to use. I don't want to spend a shitload of time installing and tweaking my operating system to work the way I want, only to realize that it isn't really the best option for me, and to learn the subtle differences between the distrobutions once I've become accostomed to one.
Another issue for me is that I simply dont have much of my windows software installations lying around. Trying to get my system back to the state its currently at will require me to hunt down a bunch of shit. I'm considering just buying a new harddrive to put gnu/linux on, so I can just switch back to windows if i feel like I have to, but I'm broke.
I think the real question tho, is why does it matter whether I am using gnu/linux or not. Gnu/linux exists, and that in and of itself is an incredible achievement. I think the adoption of gnu/linux on the desktop is incredibly unimportant. I am not a developer so I cant contribute to the community. I didnt even give microsoft any money (as we all know many many windows users dont). Even the adoption of GNU/linux in the buisiness world is a double edged sword. Buisiness will always do what it can to subvert truly radical technology. IBM has flat out refused to refer to linux as gnu/linux most likely because they do not want to associate themselves with the radical philosophy behind free software. Reap the profit, but ignore the philosophy. Subvert the philosophy.
The Gnu/linux community should be proud of what it has accomplished, and dedicate itself to continuing the development of the operating system instead of being worried about destroying microsoft or getting your mom to use it. If you cant connect to MSN messanger, so fucking what. What matters is that people who want to use it can.
One of the worst /. news items ever. (Score:2, Insightful)
On both Netcraft and /. the news is presented as a loss for Linux. Anyone with any statistics knowledge and most without will recognize that the absolute numbers are insignificant, plain and simple.
Poor journalism that should never have made it's way to Slashdot.
That the 'News' is 4 weeks old (or 8 if you count the first time Netcraft ran it) adds insult to injury - this thing is not newsworthy - it's not even news at all.
A reasonable question ... (Score:3, Insightful)
but I would have thought that you could have added something to the debate since you are the target audience for such an "Ask Slashdot" question.
For myself. Before I was recently retrenched, at work I worked on a Win2K box, with X sessions to a Redhat server and a Linux test machine. The Win2K was because the mail network used Lotus Notes, marrying Linux and the Notes stuff just didn't work. I would guess for many people it is the groupware that keeps them on Windows, I would once have also said Office but I find that OOo is now pretty good ... well good enough for developers.
At home I have a box running a Win2K partition and a RH9 partition. I use Win2K for games (mostly BF42) and one other closed software proggy that I occasionally use to fit in with other people. On the desktop for me Win2K is a secondary system.
They'll come back when ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If that doesn't do it they'll sober up when they realize the total extra cost of re-buying Office and all the other software they used on XP or W2K or Win9X but won't run on Win2003. Oh, and the new client side licenses for their existing WinXXX. They'll especially love those naggling little DRM micropayments that suddenly appear in their mail box each month. Bill said he was movng toward the subscription model. He meant it.
Re:Jump ship? (Score:3, Insightful)
What he's saying is "Don't ignore Server 2003 simply because you hate Microsoft." And, he's right. In the end, they're tools that do a job. Pick the one that's best for you instead of picking the one that makes you cool on Slashdot.
Why aren't you switching to Linux? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why aren't I switching to Linux? Perhaps because it's virtually unusable.
I am like many people, I don't want to have to learn (too) much to use my computer. I certainly don't want to have to fight with my computer.
Confusing interfaces, appalling (or nonexistant) help, lack of constistancy and lack of (real, not confusing) support are some of the reasons that I don't switch.
Linux is not about mainstream acceptance, it's about geek pride - which is why, in it's current form it will never go anywhere other than servers and geek machines.
I'm responsible for some of those numbers. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not everybody shares your wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux has achieved tremendous actual results already. Your complaint is that these actual results are not the actual results you're looking for.
Well, I'm sorry, but Linux can't be everything to everybody at all times. I use Linux as my primary desktop and server OS, but unlike you I am not under any delusions that Linux will ever stop being a hobby OS. It is largely written by hobbyists, after all.
This so-called hobby OS of yours still beats windows hands down in areas like multiple virtual desktop support and basic features like including a C compiler. Even the third party virtual desktop managers available for windows (e.g. nvidia deskview, winxp powertoys) have much poorer performance than GNOME and KDE because of the limitations of the windows frame manager API.
That attitude right there is problem #1. I don't care if it's a volunteer effort, and neither do most users.
Frankly, I don't care about your attitude either. Volunteers write software for themselves. They don't write for other people. Let's suppose hypothetically for a moment that the volunteer community were to drop all of their work and concentrate on satisfying your expectations. What tangible benefit would that bring the volunteer community? Answer: nothing. In all likelihood the result would be worse than what we have now, because the motivation is just not there when you're scratching someone else's itch instead of your own.
We just care about what's sitting in front of us on our screen, the net output.
That, my friend, is exactly why volunteers write for their own sake instead of your sake. We're just as selfish as you. We want software that fits our needs, not your needs.
You may try to argue with me on the grounds that Linux somehow "needs" non-developer users like you in order to obtain a sustainable userbase, but what you don't understand is that Linux is not like other commercial operating systems. Because Linux is so volunteer driven, it does not need a large userbase or commercial support in order to thrive in its niche role. The fact that a broader audience might find Linux useful is certainly a nice bonus, but it is not so essential to platform survival that we should sacrifice the core hobbyist nature of Linux to attain it.
Re:OK, I'll call. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'd had mod points, you'd be a troll. Why? Your last statement is flawed:
The way I see it is that Open Source is only free if your time isn't worth anything. And as I said, I have better things to do than dick around with an OS.
How many years have you been using Windows before ever using one of the Linux distros? I will admit that Linux/Unix has a much higher learning curve than Windows. However, most of the people who complain about the switch to Linux (coming from a Windows or Mac background) never take the time to properly read books/documentation. You didn't learn all the aspects of Windows overnight! Nor do you probably know everything there is to know about Windows right now. I certainly don't despite many years & serveral manuals. I probably don't know everything about DOS even though my first computer ran DOS 4.0 and I read that manual from cover to cover. I was competent, but probably not a whiz... I'm not going to learn everything there is to know about the CCNA exam overnight. That's why I am taking classes and reading the books (2 books covering 4 parts... each book has over 1,000 pages cover to cover). Take the time to read the linux books and manuals before getting in over your head and crying "help!". Otherwise, it is going to take you at least as long as it did to get "familiar" with Windows (most likely years unless you studied from day one of touching a computer).
One of the key reasons was it's anal retentive nature about Anonymous FTP. Anonymous FTP shouldn't be any less secure than a real account. The fact that the FTP accounts were tied into system accounts really turned me off from Linux. GuildFTPd aliviates that obvious security risk by not being tied into the OS. As it should be set up.
And exactly what ftp server on what distro (and version) was this? I'll take a guess and say it was either Red Hat or Mandrake. Well, both of those distros stopped using wu-ftpd a while back (which has had it's fair share of hacker-friendliness). Red Hat switched to VsFtpd (in 8.0 I think) and Mandrake has been using ProFtpd for quite a while now. Both are much better than wu-ftpd. Also, you don't think the ftp server provided by Microsoft for Win2k Server isn't tied to the OS? It is tied as much as IIS is tied to Windows (and we all know about IIS's problems). The fact that you use GuildFTPd shows that you know it's a problem. Well, any good admin sets the ftp service on a linux box to run as an unprivledged user. And even better, set the ftp server up to jail the user into their home directory on top of that.
Another was it's inability to communicate with the Windows box to transfer the server over. Kind of key when you have 80GB of files you're serving up.
Samba... learn it. It isn't hard to learn the basics of Samba, which is all that's needed to mount a remote Windows share. If you had a directory called /mnt/tmp (which I use for temporary mounts) then you can mount a share (we'll call it "web") on a windows machine (let's call it "www") by doing this:
//www/web /mnt/tmp
# mount -t smbfs -o username=johndoe,password=foo
(replace johndoe and foo with real username and password). You don't even need the samba server files installed, just the common and client files. (On Red Hat, samba-client-(version)-(arch).rpm and samba-common-(version)-(arch).rpm if I remember right).
Sure, I could have spent a couple days to get it all working, but within 3 hours I had a fully functional Windows server so I don't bother with Linux. It has nothing I need that Windows doesn't offer in a simplier to use fashion.
I have Red Hat 8 on a system I don't really use and it works fine but it's nothing I don't have with Windows.
In three hours I'd have a fully functional Linux server. I do need linux as it does offer many useful tools that I've never seen a windows equivalent of. Most of (almost all) of
Re:Jump ship? (Score:3, Insightful)
Zealots are Zealots no matter what platform they use. Windows Zealotism is just as wrong. Sometimes I find the hatred coming out of the unsilent minority Linux camp so overwhelming though that I almost feel sorry for the Windows people. Huh? Am I nuts? No, I don't think so. Take this following bit for example. (It's a copy/paste I wrote in another thread a month or so ago regarding a new user's first experience with Linux that I see all too often.)
First, the Linux Zealot (we'll call him LZ for short) convinces his friend to dump that crappy "Money$haft Winblows" Operating System and install Linux. Two days later LZ is riding his friend's behind as to why he is using that "sell out" RedCrap distro. So LZ convinces his friend to install Debian or Slackware. A month later the friend finally gets Debian installed (it takes him a month because every time he asks LZ for help, LZ just replys "RTFM!"). LZ shows up again after his friend - who is beaming with pride - calls LZ over to show him he just finished setting up his Debian install all by himself. The LZ starts hounding his friend about the pussified Gnome or KDE Desktop he's running. "That's for cowards. We elitists use BlackBox!", the LZ says. So LZ's humilated friend installs BlackBox (or whatever). A few days later LZ comes back over and sees his friend running an XChat IRC client. LZ totally loses it. "What are you doing???? A GUI IRC client??? Have you lost your mind????" In his anger, the LZ fdisks his friend's machine and storms out.
A month later the friend gets so sick of LZ's condescending attitude that he drops his PC in a river and goes out and buys a Mac. Then he (rightfully so) starts posting messages on Slashdot about how much he hates Linux.
Re:OK, I'll call. (Score:3, Insightful)