


A Strategic Comparison of Windows Vs. Unix 792
Ramsed writes "On LinuxWorld Paul Murphy wrote an article comparing Unix and Windows for a 500-student system and a 5,000-user manufacturing company. Summary: Most of the Windows versus Unix debate has been cast in terms of which is technically better or which is cheaper, but the real question is, 'Under what circumstances is it smarter to pick one technology rather than the other?'"
Condition? How Smart Do You Think Your People Are? (Score:2)
Windows also suffers from this debilitating illness known as the 'Blue Screen of Death', which provides employees with instant five minute coffee breaks at the cost of whatever files the employee or student was working on. (At least when my power spikes, I know Emacs has an annoying tilde file with most of my data in it
Re:Condition? How Smart Do You Think Your People A (Score:4, Insightful)
While the article states that there would be the need for only a single *nix support position, and four Windows support positions, we must think of this: How many additional postitions would have to be created to train students (even rudimentary training) for an infrastructure they are not accustomed to? I would guess at least 10, but depending on the size of said campus, it could grow to an exorbant amount, overshadowing the cost of the initial startup costs.
The campus I am at now is a great example (Northern Illinois) and especially the labs I work in (art/music). There are plenty of Mac's here for people to use, but unless they are die-hard Mac-heads or it is required to use them for a class, 99% of the students stay away from them for the sole reason that it is unfamiliar territory. This made the campus cut down to a single Mac support position for the entire campus (which has over 200 macs), solely because of peoples inability to accept things that are different.
Look at the makeup of the world's computer market, 90+% Windows. People fear change and are afraid to learn. Even in academia.
Later
Josh
Re:Condition? How Smart Do You Think Your People A (Score:2, Interesting)
Used to work at a college in '96 (Score:2)
Who trained the students, you will ask? The same few people that taught them Windows apps-- underpaid students like myself working part time for the college. But people had remarkably little problem EVEN THOUGH this was a college with its share of technophobes. While the comp-sci students were playing with Solaris, Linux, and NT, the rest of the workstations had laminated tips for using the csh from telnet as well as ftp commands.
Funny, lots of technophobes used Lynx and Pine and few asked for help. OK it was back in '97 but still I maintain with a little bit of help, people will learn the basics of their jobs quickly.
If I were to design a network for a college today, I would probably use Unix for most of it and allow Windows workstations to participate (SAMBA is great)...
Good points, but missed my point (Score:2)
I think that Unix/Linux with KDE or Gnome would work fine if someone paid attention to the initial desktop interface...
At least bash Windows for the right reasons (Score:4, Informative)
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to bash Windows such as lackluster security (although a patched system can be as secure as a patched GNU/Linux installation).
Working with end users, I find that Windows is both hard to learn AND hard to use. Nobody's figured out how to make a truly intuitive interface yet, including Linux and Windows. Users don't get or accept the concept that there are multiple ways of doing things - they get locked into the first technique they learn, such as going to the file menu and clicking exit rather than hitting the big x. They are STILL afraid of breaking things, which is unfortunately still a valid fear.
Re:At least bash Windows for the right reasons (Score:2, Informative)
This is the single most important aspect of user interface design. And this is what Mac OS and, I propose, Python do so very well.
Stability of XP. (Score:2)
Enter Linux. A P2 (333MHz, 160 MB Ram) is running 33 java executables for jsp development, etc. It is also running PostgreSQL and MySQL, but not X. It is also running Apache with countless modules (including mod_ssl and mod_php), tomcat, etc. It is also a fileserver (SAMBA) and running almost every other network daemon I can think of. Uptime currently 48 days (last down for a memory upgrade). Yes, it usually uses at least some swap space.
Problem is-- XP is still a workstation OS and cannot be left on continuously for extended periods of time without problems.
Re:Stability of XP. (Score:2)
I'm no MS zealot but I know my facts. I'm sorry that your machine is so unstable.
Re:Stability of XP. (Score:2)
My uptimes with Windows 2000 were ocasionally about a week, but I am REALLY hard on paging systems... And I really do push this machine.
To be fair, I get comparable uptimes on Linux (1 week before a reboot becomes the preferred solution) if I run a workstation, production server, and development server on the same machine (usually in this case, eventually the network connection fails and modprobe on the ethernet driver fails soon thereafter).
To be fair, these are NOT optimal configurations on either box...
Re:At least bash Windows for the right reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely correct. The uptime on my w2k was interrupted only by hardware problems and service patches.
How about someone rating the MTBP (mean time between patches)? The MTBP is a far bigger problem than the MTBF.
I did have some problems with w2k initially. All of my problems were due to PC Anywhere, a bad Matrox driver, a bad SB Live! driver (SMP bugs), and a stick of memory that went south.
Maybe the reason my w2k box ran so well was my Enermax 350W power supply. I think people who run Unix also tend to build better boxes.
Despite the impressive months-at-a-time stability I experienced with w2k, this machine is now running Debian. After my memory went bad and I contemplate rebuilding my software environment with all the correct patches and drivers I came down with a serious case of patchitis.
Let me tell you, though, that dselect is no walk in the park either. Ever installed ext3 on Potato and then discovered that the XFree on Potato needs some extra TLC to run dual-head, so you go ahead and run Testing anyway?
What's the net cost of Potato running two years behind the times?
Unix guys are like the people who spend two weeks at the beginning of summer painstakingly ridding their yards of every weed and vermin, and then spend the rest of the summer drinking beer in their hammock hurling abuse at their neighbors who have to spray their Dandilions every other week.
the fear of breaking things (Score:2, Interesting)
While these things aren't rocket science, you dont learn how to deal with these problems unless you are willing to pull up your sleevs and jump in. I wasn't afraid to 'break' my system repeatedly because it was fun to mess with the thing and I learned alot from what broke various programs and what fixed those same problems. On the way I learned how to use features of the OS and apps that most people are afraid to mess with.
I look at my parrents fiddling with the computer and I watch my 6 year old mess with the computer. They both have the same proficiency, but with one big difference. My parrents are afraid. Because of this they aren't learning much. Heck, they have done word processing for years, but only know about as much as my 6 year old that I have only let use the computer for a few months(and she can't even read yet!)
I can sort of see why people are afraid. Computers are expensive things to be messing up.To learn them well is complicated, time consuming and difficult.
Well, hopefully things like the Gateway Goback will help lessen the fear. Being able to 'goback' to before a driver messed up or installation went bad is pretty darn nice; wish I had that back in the dos days
Heck, maybe WinXP with its over-simplified candy-coated interface will make computers seem less intimidating. That seems to have been its purpose. If it actually works that way then it may actually be worth the evil it will cause. I think that anything that brings more computer-savy females is ultimately a good thing.
Re:At least bash Windows for the right reasons (Score:2)
Hmmf. I use Win 2K part of the time mostly for work purposes and sometimes play Unreal Tournament on it (yeah, I *know* there is a Linux port). After about an hour of UT, the machine generally locks up solid. Perhaps UT is a badly written program, but a stable OS isn't brought down by bad software. Windows has a rep of being unstable because it *is* unstable.
Exactly (Score:2)
Wow, they started calling me a lot less for tech support and they were using their boxes more often!
Moderators take note. (Score:2)
Thank you very much,
Error27
Go outside (Score:2)
Re:Go outside (Score:2)
Users avoid you because they're afraid you'll go off on them if they ask the wrong thing. You're not going to get fired, but you're sure as hell not getting promoted. You sit around patting yourself on the back for keeping such a 'tight ship'.
Do you call your co-workers retards? Have you ever worked with mentally retarded people? I'm sure you know someone who has a child with disabilities. Would you say 'retard' in front of them?
I know your type. If I met you in real life I'm sure you'd be perfectly nice to me when you realized that I know my stuff too. I'm sure you're mostly nice to people in real life, but when you get on Slashdot you can just let loose!
Let me tell you something. I have seen a lot of your type online, and met a lot of people like you in real life. People who act totally different online and in real life have a problem relating to others, and I'd really prefer not to deal with people like you in either world.
Re:At least bash Windows for the right reasons (Score:2)
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.
C:\>uptime
\\LC80257932 has been up for: 48 day(s), 5 hour(s), 16 minute(s), 21 second(s)
C:\>
This is on a ThinkPad T21. Last reboot was when I installed Visio, otherwise that number would go back to when I installed SP2, which was a couple months before that (if I remember correctly).
Re:At least bash Windows for the right reasons (Score:2)
Re:At least bash Windows for the right reasons (Score:2)
Also, didn't you have to patch your box's kernel at all for new features / security updates?
Re:BSOD, constantly. Yeah, right. (Score:2)
It IS better the NT or 95/98/ME, but it still has nothing on UNIX/Linux
Win2K and the BSOD (Score:2)
I just spent about four hours today screwing with our fastest processing computer (1ghz Athlon, 512mb DDR) because it decided to go down the toilet today, for no apparent reason.
After multiple chkdsk's and defrag's (many of which caused spontaneous reboots in the middle before finishing), I still don't have the problem figured out.
And yes, contrary to some other comments in this thread, I got the BSOD several times. Sometimes it was an invalid page fault, sometimes it was IRQL_yadda_yadda.
The machine has been working great since we got it about 6 months ago, including this morning. After lunch today, it just took a crap, who knows why. It started with application errors in AutoCAD, IE, Acrobat, you name it. It got to the point where it would only boot in safe mode.
And I'm going out of town for the next couple of days, so they'll have to do without it until I get back.
I had thought pretty highly of Win2K until now, but while it's certainly better than Win9x, it's not up to par with Linux, IMO. Linux has never done anything like this to me.
Re:Win2K and the BSOD (Score:2)
Re:Win2K and the BSOD (Score:2)
I just spent about four hours today screwing with our fastest processing computer (1ghz Athlon, 512mb DDR) because it decided to go down the toilet today, for no apparent reason.
After multiple chkdsk's and defrag's (many of which caused spontaneous reboots in the middle before finishing), I still don't have the problem figured out.
And yes, contrary to some other comments in this thread, I got the BSOD several times. Sometimes it was an invalid page fault, sometimes it was IRQL_yadda_yadda.
Has it been moved recently?
Check:
1. The heatsink and fan. Download the motherboard's probe software (if you've got an asus) and see if the power supply spikes, or the temperature of the board or CPU is above recommended limits.
2. Open the box. Press all the cards home. Press the CPU home. Press the memory home.
3. Find out what has been installed on the system recently. Download a copy of AdAware and see if anyone's been surfing on it and ended up with spyware on there.
If all else fails, work out which driver is having issues based on the module listing you get on the blue-screen, and check *that* specific device out.
Simon
Re:Win2K and the BSOD (Score:2)
And yes, contrary to some other comments in this thread, I got the BSOD several times. Sometimes it was an invalid page fault, sometimes it was IRQL_yadda_yadda.
The machine has been working great since we got it about 6 months ago, including this morning. After lunch today, it just took a crap, who knows why. It started with application errors in AutoCAD, IE, Acrobat, you name it. It got to the point where it would only boot in safe mode.
Here is what was occuring to me when I read that. I agree that this was probably not Windows' fault here. Here are the causes I came up with in order of likelihood:
1: Bad power supply
2: Slow (but probably not dead) Heat Sync Fan
3: CPU that needs reseating
4: Memory that needs reseating
5: Poor case ventilation
The power supply is the main suspect for me because of the spontanious reboots-- you may not be getting a continuous flow of DC to the memory. When that happens, you get errors which cause the blue-screens.
If the voltage sags more, the system reboots. I would bet that a multimeter would be the correct response for the A+ question
Re:BSOD, constantly. Yeah, right. (Score:2, Interesting)
Then you have people like me who try to keep their computer's uptime as high as possible. One time I managed to get my NT4 workstation's uptime to 134 days (windows started acting really weird around day 130 and I was forced to reboot). Anyway, averaging the uptime of a bunch of corporate boxes is going to come up with meaningless figures.
Re:Ummm..... (Score:2)
We've got W2K servers with uptimes over 6 months and they're still going strong. Even my ThinkPad with W2K has an uptime of over 3 weeks right now. I just suspend it when commuting.
W2K has only failed on me twice, once when I installed a driver for a cheap-ass USB device that blew up the NETLOGON.DLL (don't know how it did that, but I certainly threw that piece of crap cable out and bought a new ethernet switch instead), and the other time when I tried hacking the NTOSKRNL.EXE file to change my boot-up graphic (I was just playing with it on a test system, no biggie).
The point is, just because your system is @%!#ed, doesn't mean that W2K itself is to blame.
Sorry, don't buy it (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't this what X and a Desktop Environment (like GNOME, KDE, UDE, CDE, etc. is for. Of course, I tried to "puts around" in CDE and gave up, but GNOME, KDE, etc. are pretty intuitive.
Let's face it-- Windows IS easier to use because most people ARE used to using it. It is not anything inherent in the UI!
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
Don't suppose I like windows now (actually, I ditched it almost completely and I'm typing this in Mozilla/Linux), but one just HAS to admit that the point a poster above makes is not really true...
You use only 20 koystrokes to do a grep on your entire system? On windows, you need to press just 1 key combination.
Still I like Linux more as the commandline and scriping abilities are actually usefull, unlike in DOS/windows, where they are broken and half-implemented at best.
And you can do some nifty things with (for example) grep, things that Windows search can't...but the question is indeed: how many people use that extended functionality?
Re:Ease of use (Score:5, Insightful)
You only think that's true. One of the key discoveries in the science of human-computer interaction was that users frequently perceive easy tasks as being slower than harder ones, even though the reverse is true.
All the "power users" who think CLIs are more efficient because it seems like it takes less time would do well to try making some objective speed measurements with a stopwatch. It might come as a surprise that GUIs are actually faster, even though it seems like they are slower.Re:Condition? How Smart Do You Think Your People A (Score:2)
I Have Mirrored The Page To Be Safe (Score:2)
http://erickrout.com/comparison.html [erickrout.com]
Stacked deck.... (Score:2)
It's a large-scale Sun or the like server with "Smart Terminals" a.k.a. Dick..err.. diskless workstations a.k.a. X-terminals vs. a PC network.
I would like to see a comparison in there that also includes Linux workstations and either Unix or Linux servers.
Re:Stacked deck.... (Score:2)
Basically, what I am getting to is that it is perfectly legit to compair PCs vs SunRays in this situation. It is the way Sun is trying to get businesses to move. Cheaper, more reliable, more secure, and the performance hit is not significant for what most people do.
Best tool for the best job (Score:2)
Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 w/ Homesite vs Frontpage 2000 -- there's no comparison.
For a server, Linux always. For a web programming environment, sometimes I'll choose Windows, sometimes Linux--depends on the client's needs. For design, it'll always be a Mac.
Best tool for the situation I say.
netboot iMacs (Score:3, Informative)
Best tool for the situation I say.
Our department his a small public usage lab of newer iMacs (700 MHz G3 w/ 512 MB PC100 ram). To make life a lot easier, we setup Apple's netboot software on an OS X server and configured the stock harddrives on the iMacs for use as a scratch/temp drive for user use. The setup has been wonderful... boot times are a bit longer than normal, but still not too bad. There is no such thing as software maintainance on any of the iMacs anymore as the internal drives are simply a free for all space (though we do find some FUNKY stuff on them every now and then). The users are happy and do everything from web surfing to DV firewire video editing on the machines. Though, I have to admit, 50% of the users in that lab simply burn CDs with the iMac's internal CDRW.
letdown... (Score:2)
Re:letdown... (Score:2)
A rather glib statement to make with no supporting evidence, don't you think?
No, it's not the type of technical article you're used to or care about, but it does show some of the financial technicalities we may be faced with. What are these articles good for? Changing mindsets and causing businesses to question things, that's all. If *nix is to fend off challenges in the server room and make headway in the application space, it needs more of these.
Why? Well, a CIO may be a real hacker like you and know that *nix is better under the hood, but he needs concrete proof that it will speak the language of his boss, the CEO (or *shudder* the CFO). That language is that of business - the almighty buck, black ink, Shareholder value, whatever you call it, my friend, it's the bottom line. In order to win over those executive or business types who are blinded by the FUD surrounding *nix (that it's hard to use and expensive to admin) it has to be shown that it puts a significant amount of money back in the hands of his company's stakeholders (shareholders or taxpayers) and out of someone elses greedy little paws. Then they will start to seriously look at a *nix solution since the Return On Investment can be shown to be significant.
I personally appreciated this article (e-mail to my CIO leaving soon) from a business standpoint, since it creates the weapons that IT people need to fight and win boardroom battles. The only thing the article missed was the following:
1. Shelving active Windows licenses and software is essentially throwing away pretty valuable assets. Though, with Microsoft's recent licensing changes, they themselves may have made these assets worthless already.
2. Un-brainwas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HRe-training people to use a different system than they're used to. Always difficult and expensive to get the whole herd pointed in - and all going together in - another direction. Selecting the appropriate apps and proper user education can take care of that for the most part.
3. Business process re-tooling/re-structuring. You change the basis of the tools your employees use, you're going to have to change some of your processes as well - fact of life. This may be a significant cost.
Other than that, the article looks pretty much spot on. There will be times (not many, I'd wager) when the ROI of using a big *nix solution is so small that it won't be worth risking any productivity that exists with Windows, or Windows itself may be a better choice in the end. It comes down to performing due dillegence in order to truly find out. This article just may cause some businesses to question "conventional wisdom", and actually do true due dillegence in selecting the tools thier employees use.
Soko
Good Article but a question or 2 (Score:4, Informative)
I also agree that the UNIX servers will likely be more robust but i think its optomistic to state that the suport on desktops will be lower - the fact is theres not a lot of pre existing information to support this.
I think they are actually about the same in support costs and that works the costs out the same - having said that i can see a lot of advantages to the UNIX solution with open source giving access to a much wider range of tools at a lower cost - i would point out that MS dont force you to move up and i would also point out that on 500 machines the license costs and upgrade coss are lower as you would choose a volume licensing or select agreement basis (you would NEVER pay retail prices)
Good article but and well worth a read - i do have a slight question on bias - that is if a writer who supports open source working on an open source publicatiopn would ever make a reccomendation for closed source - i personally think that the Lonux desktop is closer than it was and almost there - and i also think everyone should have a choice in what they use-stuff like this can be a good start in helping people choose.
Re:Good Article but a question or 2 (Score:2)
MS does force you to move. They stop supporting there OS, you have to move. The advantage of creating problematic OS I suppose.
At any place I've worked running Solaris, the desktop support is almost nil. Hell I didn't even see a support person for about a year at one place. I saw the windows support guys all the time.
Solaris support for 2000 boxes, 3 guys.
WinNT support for 2000 boxes 15 guys.
Re:Good Article but a question or 2 (Score:4, Informative)
I supoprt Windows and i would not say it is perfect But under 2000 we have a lot lot less crashes than NT - its stable to fault - and this box runs XP - has done since the first test release and i have NEVER chrashed it.
And MS does end of life software - the same as Lunix kernels are replaced and as Solaris stop actively supoprting older versions - its called progress and its a good thing otherwise we wouls all still be time sharing in a PDP or an IBM RS.
My point is you need to be aware of the follwing
-Training
-Ease of use
-User Acceptance
-Interconnecatbility
A secretary doesnt want to mess around - she wants to logon, read her email, type a letter a print it out, she knows windows and has been using it for years and can use explorer to find a file, she understands macros and has customised templates and auto texts - you take away here machine she had better be able to immediately pick up the new OS and use it the same (and NO console windows - shes never SEEN DOS) and follow the same file and tree layout - KDE is almost there but i still cant give it to a secretary.
lets understand the realities - on windows desktops here my users use Outlook, Word, Excel, IE5.5, Powerpoint, SAP and some of them have apps like photshop, they know their sysytems and i doubt 1 in 50 have ever seen a command line.
I cannot replace my OS (and i would love to BTW) with linux until all of those products can work (and dont point out star office etc - ive trialled them and the KOffice is very good but we still need to interoperate with people outside and Koffice lacks a lot of things (including the macros we use for out templates)
The average user isnt ready for linux - but if we keep working on it soon they might be - lets not just try and confuse the fight with statistice lets make is a CLEAR advantage.
Re:Good Article but a question or 2 (Score:2)
The Way IT Works (Score:2)
For example:
At a not-to-be-named newspaper in the northeast (where I may or may not work
The rest of the excise equipment is "borrowed" for months by employees. Titanium PowerBooks are the most frequent to go (though i can't blame anyone for that
Another IT example, this one bearing solely on the responsibility of the IT staff.
An IT manager at a sorta-major company grew up around Windows, and is very anti-Mac. So, when IT was given the power to decide what computers to buy this year, he went after Windows PCs.... for a graphics/web content company. The result? Employees who refuse to use the Windows systems, and instead use year-old Mac systems instead. When the employees wanted OS X installed, IT went ballistic because they'd "spent so much money" on new Windows and had planned to adopt XP early over a period of time.
You'd be surprised how easily and often this stuff happens. I'm not saying it's common, but I've heard so many stories -- of which those two I am personally related, unfortunately.
So, Windows or Unix?
How about whichever you want -- but do it efficiently and effectively. If Unix continues to receive support (esp. if Mac OS X continues to receive support -- and OS X Server), Windows and OS X will be very very similar feature-wise. And price-wise, too I'm sure (don't give the "Macs are 2x more expensive!"-routine. My $1299 iBook beats the heck out of a $1600 Dell laptop.. that is ugly, too).
Inevitably, it may very well to cleaning out some management and saving money that way. EFFICIENT Corporate America.
nahhhhh...
Re:The Way IT Works (Score:2)
IBM licensed the MacOS around 1996.
IBM build PowerPC boxes, and wanted to build a common hardware reference platform that AIX and Mac OS could run on equally well.
Only the first ever amounted to a product that people could buy, but never say never...
Re:The Way IT Works (Score:2)
I'm biased toward Macs because I've had great experiences with them in newspapers and graphic designs and web design.. and now I'm having success in the field of Unix, too.
Again, my judgement isn't clouded, I simply pointed out a situation that involved a very stupid mistake where they bought Wintel boxes. The point wasn't so much the machines but rather the error made, to clarify.
I'm sure you're not overpaid if you're working 70 hours a week. You're a most humbly welcomed exception to the experiences I've had...
Re:The Way IT Works (Score:2)
I have seen many IT managers as bad as you pointed out and some worse - you dont need to apologise, the should be the ones apologising - and if the Manager at the company you talk about is stupid enough to buy something without asking or talking the the users he should be out of a job
There are lots of us out here who are like me - the thing is we do our jobs and no one heres about us - only the idiots get publicity (the wrong sort but)
Nice talking to you - long live apple
broken assumptions. (Score:3, Insightful)
That means you would usually buy a complete PC with Windows then have to slick the drive and install Linux. And somehow I just don't see parents going with Linux. The *only* way this happens is if the school forces you to buy a prebuilt package(s) from them.
Sorry. That assumption is way too far gone to be overlooked.
Depends on the system administration... (Score:2)
At work we've got a system administrator for the Windows 2000 machines and he knows what he's doing. Result: the machines run as smoothly and stable as our UNIX boxes.
Heck, when the Linux team have a bad day, more smoothly and stable.
Technically, I completely dig UNIX. Idealogically, I completely distrust anything from Redmond. Strategically, sysadmin skills are all that matter.
Re:Depends on the system administration... (Score:2)
Yes, but you are missing the most important part of the article. The UNIX solution was to put X-terminals on the users desks. Imagine a workplace where you have one machine to administer instead of a hodge podge of PCs all subtly different.
A good admin can make any box sing, but it takes a lot more manpower to keep a pile of desktop PCs running smoothly, even if you are skilled. Heck, just getting rid of those pesky hard drives is a big deal.
Thin clients, my friend, make all of the difference. Properly deployed thin clients make it possible to put a professionally sysadminned computer on everyone's desktop. That's a big deal.
This isn't anything new (Score:2, Insightful)
While I won't attempt to make the estimates myself, I will suggest a few things to take into consideration
FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
Kpresenter will work for presentations or several others. You can use Aethera or Evolution. Spend a few hours to train the user and they will be more productive than they ever were.
* Interaction with others outside your office. Since Windows is the standard in the corporate world, you have to be able to communicate effectively with Windows. Samba is not easy for the average user to use like network neighborhood is. OpenOffice isn't able to work with MS Office as well as people tell you. It can read some old versions of word documents, but it doesn't work with Office XP. Microsoft will most likely make a conversion tool for Windows users who are using Office 2k or older, but not for unix. Unfortunately, until you have everyone agree to use unix it will never be a good office tool for people that communicate with those outside your office.
Sending Documetns out are no problem. Receiving Documents is no problem. You simply say "This not readable. Please send in X format." I shouldn't need to say what formats will work.
* Support costs. Corporate support is a very important thing. Anyone that works with big companies to maintain their server hardware and software knows that if you have a critical problem and you're paying $200k a year in support, they will have a patch out for you by COB the next day. (Perhaps that was a slight exaggeration, but they are still very quick to solve problems.) The problem is that Windows support is generally cheaper than Unix support. I wouldn't even consider linux in an office environment though, because those that support it are not the same group that developers the software.
Red Hat, Mandrakesoft, SuSE, and even Caldera do not do developement? Then what are all those developers on staff for?
Your last argument is rather circular despite the hidden truth to it. Your actual argument is the truth that people see. The real reason is because of various shady backroom deals that get made. People are afraid of change. That and Microsoft has some flashy marketing.
the sexetary doesn't like eunichs (Score:3, Insightful)
This article seeks to use "average" scenarios to make its point. I would say that Unix would be a lot more beneficial in specialized situations, where employees use a lot of custom or specialized software (e.g. POS stations, industrial settings). They're going to have to learn anyway, so why not have them learn it on a cheaper, more stable platform?
In the college scenario, the article takes no account that many colleges make these decisions based on what the students use. Usually, that's Windows. Sometimes Mac. Almost never *nix.
In the corporate scenario, no mention is made of the need to share files with other companies. This requires Windows. No corporation really cares about the evils of closed file formats until they get in the way. Besides, how are any pitches going to be made without PowerPoint?
To be realistic, both situations should have compared the cost of a Windows setup vs. a mixed Unix/Windows setup, since that's how it work in the real world.
For all your stain lifting needs: Mac OS X! (Score:2)
It does everything *except* Windows!
Re:For all your stain lifting needs: Mac OS X! (Score:2)
the one downside here is the more expensive, proprietary hardware. OTOH, it is truly much more elegant than most off the shelf PC stuff, and that hasn't stopped me from owning many of their products myself.
The point would be making an argument to a suit who handles a budget why this may / may not be the best choice.
Re:the sexetary doesn't like eunichs (Score:2)
For what it's worth, there's also PDF. Any presentation-building tool that can print out in PDF will be readable on vitrually any computer, with no problems.
I went to Japan recently for a project. I put together my sllides in Powerpoint , but had a colleague put them in PDF format before handing the disk over to get copies and overheads made, and they worked out great. I could have used any tool to put them together, as long as Acrobat could make a PDF out of it. Another colleague gave the Powerpoint file, and the Japanese computers didn't have his fonts, so it looked ugly.
But I forgot, PDF presentations don't have embedded sound, movies, or stupid curved Word-Art. That seems to be all that's in all of the non-technical presentations I get to see lately.
Re:the sexetary doesn't like eunichs (Score:2)
It costs money to train people to use Windows too. Have you ever seen the price list for MCS* trainging courses + exams.
In the college scenario, the article takes no account that many colleges make these decisions based on what the students use.
Beg to differ. Most colleges use a) what ever they've been using forever, or b) what the profs who have funding want to use for a given course.
--locust
Re:the sexetary doesn't like eunichs (Score:2)
The Secretary is not an IT Person (Score:2)
Re:the sexetary doesn't like eunichs (Score:2)
1) People use Windows.
2) College students use Windows b/c it's what they use.
3) Colleges use Windows b/c it's what the students use.
4) People with jobs [replacing the word secretary] use Windows b/c they used it in college, and they don't want to change.
5) They teach their children to use Windows b/c that's what they use at the office and don't want a seperate OS at home.
The conclusion? Somewhere along the line a *nix system needs to be used to break the cycle. It's partially happening now, but not enough people use *nix to make a real impact on Windows use. (These few people probably also are forced to use Windows some of the time anyway). So unless a clean break can be made by a large number of people I see Windows staying the OS of choice for the near future.
Answer the freakin' question, people... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unix -- Useful for light-to-medium duty single server environments (especially file-sharing and WWW), as well as clustering; Solaris, AIX, Irix, and occasionally even Linux pop up on high-end (i.e. mainframe or supercomputer class) systems. Also the system of choice for cluster computing (though MacOS Classic can make a credible case for being a viable cluster computation environment as well). Unix's traditional timesharing environment is a very small niche in the modern market, but still useful. Also a major scientific computing platform. The downside is that the proliferation of standards makes generalizing about anything above the command line difficult and/or pointless; Solaris != Linux != BSD, and it's going to stay that way. Runs on everything concievable, from a Commodore 64 all the way up to gigantic Cray supercomputers and Linux clusters.
MacOS -- Don't run a publishing house or recording studio without it; the Mac is the platform of choice for the creative industry. Also a good choice for education, but a weak gaming platform. MacOS X largely eliminates instability from legacy code. AppleScript as a scripting platform makes VBA and Unix Shell look horribly primitive (and MacPerl is available as well). Limited to PowerPC hardware.
That's my summation...
/Brian
Re:Answer the freakin' question, people... (Score:2)
What AppleScript does so well (candygrammar aside) is work with the AppleEvent Object Model. A properly designed AEOM application can be controlled at a very fine-grained level by an AppleScript or anything else capable of sending the proper AppleEvents. The AppleScript grammar is a bit clumsy, but it works very well for what it's designed to do. (Yes, you could do better, but that's not my point.) The fact is that with an AppleScript you can control a properly designed app like a marionette. You can't do that with a basic old-school shell script.
/Brian
Good article, this snippet especially.. (Score:2)
expert on win95 caused the same cerebral twinge normally reserved for "military intelligence" or "managerial decision".
While the mention of NETB...oh, god, I can't say it, much less type it without that "fingernails screeching down a chalk board" chill down my spine...(sniff..*SOB*, shudder...make it stop...MAKE IT STOP!!).
and that "Basic UNIX networking in XP"...oh, that explains why changing network settings no longer requires a reboot.
Learn something new every day.
Of course I love the quote--not from the article, mind you (might have been on arstechnica, I think)--- that Microsoft Windows 2000 is better and more stable that 30 year old UNIX technology, but, later claims that Windows 2000 is approaching the *stability* of said 30 year old UNIX technology...
And sure enough, there was a link to a "PR" page on windows 2000... yep, decode some of the marketing "twists and turns" and, yes-sirreee, the put UNIX down and say "We are almost as good" in black and white.
Heh.
Do I really have to read the article... (Score:2)
...to guess what technology the LinuxWorld guy thought was smarter?
No, I think not. I shall look elsewhere for real comparisons.
Not a real world case study (Score:4, Interesting)
To properly set up that many SunRays, the load has to be distributed between a number of servers, because every client running *office, nutscrape^Wmozilla, and a few xterms with email clients will require about 50Mbytes per session. Thats 25 GigaBytes of RAM, not counting the slowaris overhead. Hit swap even slightly with that much real memory, and watch every session run at 20MHz 386 speeds.
No, this is a completely unrealistic mismatch. It would have been nice if the author had asked a few *nix and *doze experts for some real numbers and real world installations, then we could use an article like this for something useful. As it is, M$ doesn't even need to respond, its 100% grade-A FUD.
the AC
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:2)
Sauce, for the goose.
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:2)
For one thing, there's always a few people who are going to run some weird program that sucks cycles like made, degading performance for everyone. For another, students don't work under average load conditions. Everybody is slacking off until two weeks before finals and then trying to get it all done at once. If system performance goes to hell under the excess load, you're going to have a lot of unhappy students.
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:2)
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:2, Interesting)
Mozilla is a hog, and if you're opening up a few documents, expect OpenOffice to use more too. I'd figure at least 100MB per user. Now we're talking 50GB of RAM.
I don't know what the author's been smoking, but I'd never put all the users on just one box. If a lab PC goes down, the user can switch to another. If your one and only Unix server goes down, everyone goes home. It would be better to split the processors between two smaller boxes, than to put everything in one.
The processors and memory are the largest part of the 4800's cost (especially in the configurations we're talking about. The chassis, backplane, and power supplies are relatively cheap.
And what the heck is going on with a SPARCstation 10 as the management console? Excuse me, but those have been discontinued for how many years? He mentions Office XP, so it's not as if this "report" was written in 1995. Sheesh.
I am a total Unix/Linux advocate, but this "report" is completely bogus.
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:4, Informative)
Then install 50 GB for good measure. The 4800 is one hellofa machine and can handle up to 96 GB of RAM.
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:4, Informative)
Sun typically ran over 100 SunRays at once with a single e450 with 8 cpu's and 12 gigs ram, repeating this setup for about a dozen servers in the initial rollout. I was not only there, I supported the installations. I ended up ditching my desktop for a SunRay because they really were that fast.
requirement of 25 gigs RAM? no problemo. this isn't a PC you're talking about. slowaris? run ps on a linux box with all the processes of 500 logged in users and you tell me what's slow. you talk a lot about the real world
Re:Not a real world case study (Score:3, Informative)
That's a neat trick - the E450 only has 4 CPU slots, and takes a max. of 4GB of RAM...
Here's a real world case study: I have an E450 running SunRays at work:
I chose QVWM because it is lightweight with a Windows look and feel - it also loads *really* fast. Getting it to work properly with the SunRays was fiddly, but not that hard once I copied the relevant parts from the CDE environment. (There's one script that I've had to leave as ksh - I've tried porting it to csh/Bourne shell but it seems to be doing something really weird...)
The production rollout will be around 25 SunRays via a gigabit connection to the server (100MHz to the desktop), so I'll probably add a couple of CPUs and 2-3GB of RAM to play it safe. (There are around 10 "power" users; the rest will be shared terminals with intermittent usage.)
The server it is replacing is an old Sparc 20 with 2x150MHz Ross CPUs, 384MB of RAM and a bunch of old Labtam X-terminals (8-bit colour only); it's old, it struggles a bit under peak usage but it has worked admirably for years. The switch to 24-bit colour will be a vast improvement - the extra performance is a bonus.
Complete ignorant bias (Score:3, Redundant)
In the end this is a piece of well researched FUD designed to come to the predetermined conclusion - Unix is better than Windows.
I beg to differ - most decision have to be made in the context of an existing architecture, business system and corporate momentum. It is always a case of choosing the best solution to fit the existing network for a minimum medium term cost.
Re:Complete ignorant bias (Score:2)
hear hear! While I am not employed by Microsoft, and I don't particularly LIKE Microsoft, I do have to agree that this article is just a big 'LINUX ROX' rant. I worked for a small web company as their only Windows admin for a few months. We had 50 employees, with 50 Windows boxes (an ugly mix of desktop and laptops, running NT4, W2k Pro, and W98.) Along with 3 Windows NT servers, an Exchange server, and a SQL server. That was our 'in-house' network. We (Being an internet company) also had an array of 5 Linux boxes that our service ran on. We had myself as the Windows admin, and one other person as the Linux admin. The Windows boxes went down so infrequently that I got laid off and replaced with a college student 'PC TECH' getting half my salary, who handled it no problem, even with too much free time. Our poor Linux guy, however, was constantly applying new patches, solving network issues, and the like...
Re:Complete ignorant bias (Score:2)
Re:Complete ignorant bias (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like the Linux guy knew enough to look busy so he didn't get laid off like you did.. ;)
Re:Complete ignorant bias (Score:2)
(heh) (Score:2)
cost of Storage for said users: 8X 40K
The look on the Admins face when management standardizes on XP home
edition and s/he has to make 5,200 phone calls to activate them all:
Priceless.
(Laff now, you know it will happen to someone, eventually. With Microsoft's luck it will be a charity.)
Nice try, but too biased (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading this article, being a very informed technical user (one who has done both Uni unix sysadmining and Windows sysadmining because, well, what Windows machine hasn't needed it?), I found it very hard to buy any of Murphy basic assumptions or trade-offs.
First off, why does a Dell 2100 cost so much in the Windows solution? I went to www.dell.com to price the same thing and got US$1262.11 (40GB HDD, 256MB, 1.1Ghz Celeron, 17in head, net card, 2000/XP with Office academic). Mind you, I went in the Academic pricing door, because he is pricing for a school. The Office/2K software adds about $280 to the bill. Thus, the only thing he should have noted is that each computer buyer shells out $280 more for Windows. In other words, for the 900 computers (500 school, 400 home) in his first example, that's $252K - no chump change). That assumes no school licensing. If he isn't getting those basic numbers right, you know the rest of the article is bent...
The idea that "Smart Displays" would cut it in school is OK for some (terminal rooms, where many go to just read mail and surf), but forget it for heavy work. I've not heard of these being satisfactorily used in practice.
Also, I hate to say it, but I don't think this guy has ever seriously used Win2K. Many may not like to hear it - but I've only seen the BSOD once while using it. I've been actually pleasantly surprised myself at its reliability. I am now able to run these things for months without reboot (OK, so I had a solaris machine that went for a little over a year once until we upgraded the memory...). In any case, either system properly maintained is fairly reliable.
Point 2 - administration. At my old Uni, the CS systems (not the general machines) were maintained by 2 full time Unix sysadmins (we actually had very few Windows machines at the time) and a horde of cheap or free volunteers. The systems ran 24 hours, but only with help (because beginning CS programmers can do all sorts of weird things you don't anticipate). Either way, it's at least one full time person for Unix or Windows. I think the real cost will be in all the tech support needed for these students that grew up on Windows at home (at least 95% of them). That will need 4 full time people in and of itself.
I'll buy point 3, but everyone likes to upgrade.
I'm a little less able to gripe about his assumptions in the 5,000 manufacturing environment, but I'll add in some thoughts...
The last company I worked at had over 5000 all over the world. It was a mixed Unix and Windows (mostly Windows, since tech is always smaller than marketing and sales), and the whole organization didn't have but 50 tech support total. They worked hard, but they had a pretty efficient setup, and things went pretty smoothly. I'm going to assume he got his 30:1 Windows user:support ratio from some informed source, but he doesn't cite one, and I've never seen it that bad in practice.
Anyway, no need to beat the horse. There is one reason I do like the article. It is totally biased for Unix to win. However, there is so much crap that says the opposite (in Windows favor), that I guess you have to have the CIOs read both poles of crap to come to a decision in the middle.
Re:Nice try, but too biased (Score:2)
Re:Nice try, but too biased (Score:2)
Total Crap (Score:2, Interesting)
Also massive single point of failure exists in the School Sun solution - if the server goes, then you have 500 paper weights! Add another Sun Server and you are close to the quoted Windows cost.
Using very similar client terminals, a Windows Terminal solution (Citirx and NCR) can be offered at less than the Sun solution using the same Four servers recommended.
More
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Now if someone could just recommend a good visual mode text editor.
Glaring errors... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not certain at what point and time this article was researched. So I'm going to ignore the glaring price descrepancy for the hardware... specifically the Dell GX150 which they list at $1200, but I can get for $900 from Dell's website.
But the most glaring error in a case study about academic purchases is that the $479 is a retail price for Office XP Standard full edition.
A college would most certainly qualify for academic prices, which would put you at only $159/desktop for the software. That is a $320 discrepancy per desktop resulting in at least a $160,000 error in the bottom line.
Furthermore with more than 500 computers on campus, the college would qualify for the Academic Select licensing which will likely further reduce costs.
It's unclear if the author made further mistakes of this nature. I can only assume that he didn't factor in the fact that students can buy Office XP for home use for only $150 as well, and so forth.
I just barely glanced at the costs used for the corporate side and saw similar glaring errors.
I'm still trying to figure out why he decided to throw Microsoft Operations Manager into the mix. That seems like a convenient way to throw another $120k onto the price tag. I wonder if the author even knows what MOM does, or that it's actually a NetIQ product licensed by Microsoft.
So has anyone looked at OS X? (Score:2)
Still, would the comparison change drastically when OS X is ready for primetime?
A Unix on the desktop that is stable and powerful and full featured *and* intuitive? With Windows connectivity, as well as Office apps, and Unix connectivity?
Office for OS X is released (Score:2)
Re:So has anyone looked at OS X? (Score:3, Informative)
MS recently completed the Mac OS X version of Office (Office v.X) and it should be shipping soon. If that isn't a sign of OS X being ready for primetime, then I don't know what is.
In related news, Apple is gearing up to release Mac OS X 10.1.1, a 0.0.1 point release to address a few minor issues. OS X is looking better all the time.
Forgetting Legacy Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we want companies like Ford to adopt linux? It isn't going to happen. They have, I am sure, billions of dollars invested in 16 bit and 32 bit windows software (Yes, there are still many VB 3.0 applications out there.). Until Linux provides proven, reliable, backwards compatibility here it's no dice. The lock-in cost is just too high.
Now. This may be possible in 10 years from now. As long as corporate developers use plain ole HTML plus well-supported Javascript and don't use ActiveX and, worse the new
Re:Forgetting Legacy Software (Score:2)
It's not so much that DOS already had the advantage -- it's the lost opportunity cost. In 1990, seeing a XT or AT machine in production was not that uncommon -- there was virtually no reason to have a better machine with DOS software. But, either with Mac or Windows, that machine would need to be replaced to run in a GUI environment (and either could emulate a 8088 just fine).
Another huge factor was VisualBasic -- Microsoft somehow convinced Apple to not include database drivers in with HyperCard, and the rest is history. I know the place I worked at in the mid 90s purged a significant numbers of Macs as part of a "Client-Server Standards" project (although the users would often ignore their shiny new PC as much as possible and kept clunking along on their IIci or whatever).
Furthermore, Apple made the affirmative decision that they were going to be network incompatible with everyone else. Ask any old Novell admin about MAC.NLM and see him cringe...
Hardware is the reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Forgetting Legacy Software (Score:3, Interesting)
So let's say Linux gets 100% Windows compatibility. Joe Blow walks into CompUSA and sees 10000 Windows titles and 5 Linux titles. What OS is he going to choose?
Great numbers but discussion is suspect (Score:2)
Since BugToaster doesn't give statistical breakdowns such as application versus OS crashes their data is practically meaningless. I'm pretty sure Mindcraft can come up with a survey that shows that people running Linux that use the 2 year old versions of Netscape have to deal with a lot of crashes and it would be shouted down for being teh FUD that it is, well this guy is guilty of doing the same thing.
He forgot something (Score:3, Funny)
Now both companies discover that Peoplesoft doesn't include a sales force automation system. The sales department needs some way to track leads, follow up on potential clients and their golf handicaps, finalize orders.
Each company sends out an RFP for an SFA system. Company B gets proposals from a dozen vendors and picks one that may not be perfect, but seems to fit the needs and culture of the company. Company A gets a single proposal for a half-assed piece of shit that was bought out from another company that went out of business 6 years ago. The system was never really completed and only has 3 other companies that use it currently, one in chapter 13. Source code is somewhere in a box of 9 track tapes in Brussels, Belgium.
Company B starts selling more widgets while company A is trying to find a consultant to add a cell phone field to their SFA system. Company B makes a lot more money, uses some of it to pay for the inordinate number of clueless MCSEs in the basement, and uses the rest of it to buy company B. Four long haired, bearded fat guys are on monster.com looking for Solaris admin jobs, the rest of Company A is retrained on Windows. Ob la di, ob la da, life goes on.
(for god's sake, the author can't even spell NetBEUI)
Utterly bogus comprisons (Score:2)
I don't care who is administering the systems but one person is not going to have 500 systems out of their boxes, let alone fully configured in under 4 months. Hardware failures alone are going to keep this guy pretty busy from then on.
The author clearly either has no experience of managing large numbers of machines or was completely unresponsive to his users if he did.
Any idiot can manage 500 machines if he does diddly squat.
there's a reason why NT admins are easy to find... (Score:2)
To be objective, the difference is experience. An NT admin might be a 'reboot monkey'. An NT admin might be someone who clicks OK after putting the CD in the drive. An NT admin might be someone who upgrades users applications one machine at a time.
I realize there are NT admins who are developers, write code, manage hundreds of systems via sms, etc. But, that's not your average NT admin.
Now a unix admin... anything more than a junior unix admin almost by definition requires scripting or programming experience.
You get what you pay for. I'll take one Senior unix sysadmin over 3 junior NT admins any day of the week. Do the math.
Re:there's a reason why NT admins are easy to find (Score:2)
Well, duh. I'd take one Senior NT admin over 3 junior unix admins, too, if my goal was getting things done. (If I wanted to mentor them, and train them right, ok, maybe the three unix guys.) The bottom line is that good people are good people, and bad (technically, not morally ) people are bad people. The only difference between NT and unix is that you don't find paper-MCSE's floating around in the unix world-- yet. Then again, every school kid who ever installed Mandrake (which, btw, I like... but they do cater somewhat towards newbies) thinks he's a unix admin, and I've seen what some of them can screw up...
Re: I actually wish windows didn't suck so much (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally prefer unix, but realize that lots of people at work just care about MS project, MS Office, MSIE, their bookmarks, their mp3's, their email. MSIE on Windows beats netscape on any platform with Konqueror being a distant second favorite.
I take issue with your 'any OS is only as good as the person administering it'. Compare the remote management/multiuser functionality ONLY of solaris versus windows and tell me with a straight face that Site-wide administration of Windows isn't either crippled or medieval given out of the box or freely available tools.
My point in comparing ONE SR UNIX SA to *THREE* JR Unix SA is that the previous post said it was harder to hire unix SA's -- It's not hard, you just have to pay them more.
A SR unix SA can take a buggy product, code some scripts and wrappers to make it do lots of great things. A whole team of JR NT SA's would be stuck reinstalling and waiting for patches. The whole thing is about what solution is best for what case. If the only thing going for a windows solution is that someone with less experience can set it up quickly, you're missing lots of important variables like 'abiity to customize', 'dependence on vendor', 'SA time required to manage and maintain', 'security', 'susceptibility to viruses and compromise', scalability, (in)ability to manage remotely.
I appreciate that windows is easier for users to learn. My mom and dad use windows. I run it on my laptop. But... it's got a long way to go to come close to UNIX's flexibility/multiuseredness/managability/uptime/s
BTW: Anyone else notice that Windows XP has crippled the terminal services so that you can't have multiple connections to an XP box? Talk about a step in the wrong direction!
I prefer to administrate *NIX because (Score:2)
So most NT admins are inferior to UNIX admins because the OS is end-user friendly and admin-hostile.
What about training (Score:2)
So training is less of an issue. Anyway, Windows is easier to use because most people are used to windows. So actually training people may not be that hard... Especially if they don't use their computers that much.
Re:1 user support person per 30 people for MSoft? (Score:2)
Only time I had a serious problem is with liveware from creative labs. And it was a known issue. Otherwise I had people use machines for months with only some how do I do this questions.
It seems some nix zealots blame anything on windows. But when it comes to nix it's a legitimate compatibility problem or hardware problem.