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)
Re:Jump ship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm... -1 Flamebait in the story summary?
Re:Jump ship? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Jump ship? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Jump ship? (Score:3, Interesting)
How long a shelf life can Win98 have at this point?
Re:Jump ship? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Jump ship? (Score:5, Interesting)
Credible story (Score:3, Interesting)
Note that these servers are unmanaged so the provider has no personnel costs related to that at all.
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.
I'm responsible for some of those numbers. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 "n
Re:Jump ship? (Score:4, Interesting)
I first tried linux back when it was kernel 0.99.something. Neat toy, but not useful.
Slackware 3.0 was my first "real" linux. Neat toy, but not useful on the desktop. I was learning a lot of stuff about *nix though. I kept it on a partition though, because there were a few cool X games, and I could code in Perl. I kept up with the Slackware releases for a while.
Things started to change when I installed Red Hat 6. It supported all of my hardware. I installed both GNOME and KDE. GNOME wouldn't start for some reason, but KDE would. KDE was pretty cool, and made things fairly useful.
I found I booted into Windows less and less... until finally the only time I ever used Windows was to play games or use MS Office.
I'm now running RH 9 and since I've been Linux-conscious on hardware purchases all of my hardware is supported well. Applications like OpenOffice have removed my dependence on MS Office.
There is only a single reason I ever boot Windows: My wife likes to play Age of Mythology with me over the LAN, and it doesn't run on Linux. Since I don't play it all the time, it's not a reason to boot into Windows by default.
Everything else I want/need can be found in Linux, and works well.
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.
Would you mind naming these software and hardware?
Re:Jump ship? (Score:3, Informative)
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 progra
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
Re:Jump ship? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the manufacturers don't know there's a market they're not going to both. I like to think I had a little affect in getting that Parhelia driver out
Remember, the manufacturers are interested in one thing, money. If you have it and will spend it, they will come.
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 */
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The heading should read "Only 5% of Windows Server 2003 users switched from Linux."
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent chance to see what Linux is lacking and perhaps maybe even show few people that Linux has the options they think it lacks!
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.
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Interesting)
i don't know where you live, but where i live, a kWh costs around $0.08. 100W-17W = 83W (difference between operating the computer vs. the router, as mentioned above somewhere).
so, 83W * 24 h/day * 365 days/yr * 1kW/1000W = 727 kWh/yr.
multiply that by $0.08, and that's on the order of $58 he'd be saving per year running a linksys router instead of a computer. assuming the router costs $40, he's paid for it in a little over 8 months. less, actually, since he wouldn't h
translation: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Next Poll: (Score:3, Funny)
- Yes
- No
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
Complaining about software (Score:3, Informative)
- 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. (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: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:5, Interesting)
In our case, we switched our Samba servers over to Windows 2000 about 18 months ago because a new CIO was installed, and he commanded from the ivory tower that we would be all Microsoft within one year from his start date. No, we aren't using 2003--yet. But it seems conceivable to me that other companies are in similar situations... Their linux machines run great, like toy cars on Christmas morning, but somebody somewhere in authority gets a pitch from an MS salesman, and the next thing you know, bye-bye Samba and Apache, hello IIS and Windows 2003 file servers. (Ugh!)
So in our case, it was an arbitrary decision by somebody higher up. We never had ANY problems with the Samba servers, but because he used to work at Microsoft (in Redmond, y'all!) it was done.
Or perhaps they decided they wanted to re-write their whole web-site in ASP.net. I know a job I applied for recently was mine until we started talking about their web-site, and I recommended they not go ASP but implement their new site in HTML/PHP on apache using a low-cost database like mysql or postgres. As a one-man band, I would prefer to spend my time patching the parts of apache/php/mysql that need patched, rather than having to test and verify the twice per afternoon stuff that has been out from MS lately.
Re:Doh. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Funny)
If people are using MS Server 2003 (or worse, switching from Linux) that means Linux has *failed* in some respect, in the minds of those customers
Anybody else think the 5% might be a result of PHBs who trust their MS reps more than their own engineers?
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.
I wish it would stop being a hobby OS (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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: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:Doh. (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
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
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: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) n
Re:OK, I'll call. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Win2kPro Easier? Come On! (Score:3, Interesting)
The worst thing that microsoft has done for our industry is to breed a whole generation of check-box programmers and admins -- if they c
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:Apache != Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Obvious troll.
Other than the tight integration with the OS a
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:2, Funny)
I don't know about that. With Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, undoubtably Microsoft's greatest product yet, businesses and individuals alike can be assured that they'll lower their TCO while ensuring the time-honored commitment of Microsoft to providing world-class customer service and product quality. Only with Microsoft Windows 2003 Server will companies be able to tackle the e-commerce situations of the future using...
aww fsck it. I can'
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Curiosity. Microsoft is giving away demo CD's almost as freely as AOL does. So if you're remotly curious - you can just throw it on a non critical web server just to see what it's like.
I bet that's what going on here - we're talking 'bout a few thousand servers that have Windows 2003 - and only a *few* of those were orgionally Linux.
Re:Doh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doh. (Score:3, Funny)
What this likely says is that "of all the broadband users who run servers on their cable modems, 5% of those running Linux have formatted and installed a warez copy of Windows 2003 because they couldn't figure out how to secure their FTP services)".
Why worry? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time (and trial and error).
Re:Why worry? (Score:3, Informative)
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
Uh... (Score:2)
How about, "No."
You don't leave a battlefield just because the enemy takes some ground.
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Funny)
Unless it's "Battlefield Earth." In that case just run.
I see a new troll coming on.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I see a new troll coming on.. (Score:2, Funny)
Hell, we might even get a world record out of it...
"Quickest felling of a MySQL server"
FP? (Score:2, Funny)
Excuse me.. (Score:2)
Why?
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 .
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...
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.
Well, this explains... (Score:2)
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:Uhhm, so companies are trying out the new (Score:3, Funny)
.Net Revolution? (Score:2, Funny)
Tears welled up...
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
Data is Waaaaaay Off (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Data is Waaaaaay Off (Score:2, Funny)
On the other hand (Score:4, Informative)
Watch everything (Score:2)
I realize this is sarcasm, but the sentiment of potential trouble should be genuine, regardless of whether or not trouble actually exists.
One obtains and maintains dominance by being absolutely paranoid. Microsoft watches everyone else like a hawk -- and if Linux wants to erode Windows market share and shove immutable roots into the ground, its developers must be equally vigilant, if not more so, as it is in some circles the perceived underdog.
And v
Typical non-news (Score:2)
Article moderation: Troll (Score:2)
Changes on the netcraft site (Score:2)
Personally, I consider this news item on
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].
Old news (Score:2)
Worst case scenario, about 4500 servers may have switched from Linux to Win2003. I can easily see that as a result of statistical noise, or of pointy-haired management thinking, "Ooooh! Shiny new toy! Microsoft says it's secure! I want one! I wonder what's in the cafeteria for lunch."
File this one as being from the "So what? Me, worry?" department.
New poll idea... (Score:5, Funny)
1[] Capitulate to the microwenie with pleasure.
2[] Change the ID strings and pocket the money.
3[] Install Win2k3 but leave Linux doing the real work (dynamic pages etc).
4[] Tell him to f**k off.
5[] Electrocte the boss with a waffle iron.
So... only 5% chose 1, although some may have done 2 or 3 instead - so call it 2%. Me? My boss knows better than to tell me to install Win2k3 - the previous electrical burn marks attest to that.
The 5% is meaningless without marketshare data (Score:2)
In the end it will not matter (Score:2)
Percentages (Score:2, Funny)
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.)
"Troll" articles get lots of comments (Score:2)
Well, that's great news for the Windows OEM staff being put under intense pressure by their Directors to make inroads in the Linux market.
There's another interesting statistic which the
As Vic Reeves says, "82% of statistics are made up on the spot."
2003 server way better than other MS Offerings (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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.
Ridiculous Use of Statistics (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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!
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.
Also according to NetCraft... (Score:5, Funny)
windows 2003 is more managable (Score:3, Interesting)
If you ever worked at an ISP that hosted both Windows ASP/Front Page sites and UNIX PHP/CGI/DreamWeaver sites you know first hand how much of a royal pain in the ass managing the Windows sites is. Windows accounted for only 10% or so of our hosted sites but consumed about 65% of our support budget. It's simply too hard or even outright impossible to automate administrative tasks.
I've heard from several sources that Windows 2003 makes this *much* easier, so it's very possible that the major hosting companies that have to deal with all of these ASP/Front Page sites that once moved as many sites as possible to a Linux platform to cut their costs have moved back now that they have Windows 2003.
And it only took Microsoft 6 years to start addressing this market, and of all of the people who said Windows 2003 was way better, they still have a lot of complaints.
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>
The real reason (Score:3, Funny)
The 5% is coming from business gained by running Microsoft advertisements on slashdot.
Switching to Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
It's kind of difficult to explain why, but it has something to do with the documentation being difficult to use.
There is plenty of Linux documentation, man pages, HowTos, and all kinds of other stuff in newsgroups/forum postings.
But often times, it is very difficult to find a simple, step-by-step instruction list to accomplish a task that I know LOTS of other people have done.
For example-----I do not know how to make my own initrd. I run Suse 8.2, and wanted to test the 2.6.0-test5 kernel. Couldn't get it installed properly. I was running Grub, and the make install script was not configuring Grub correctly. For some reason, the mkinitrd script was not producing the right file either (quite possibly I was not using it correctly).
All sorts of little issues like this, that thousands of you power users out there have been able to do correctly, I have not be able to get around, since the documentation is often indicipherable.
Maybe I'm an idiot, but I spent hours, and hours, looking through man pages and searching on google. I didn't bother posting to a newsgroup, instead, I gave up, and started using Lilo.
2.6 couldn't find my root filesystem. Don't know why (probably mis-configured my initrd). Don't care. 6 hours invested? Better off reverting to 2.4.
I have similar problems---My fonts in mozilla are not anti-aliased properly, and I can't figure out why. I've configured it the same exact way as I did in Mandrake, but the fonts are butt ugly.
All sorts of other minor, nagging issues too. I won't go into them now, but it pisses me off the way forum posts will refer to man pages which refer to man pages which refer to 'common' knowledge, which I'll have to google for, and which won't apply to my distribution.
Perhaps, what needs to happen is more and better contextual help. Maybe an interactive --help switch in most programs? Or just redesigning man pages---This is a project that I would definitely love to participate in, but I just don't have the knowledge---If other people were willing to contribute suggestions, I would love to help organize an 'alternative' comprehensive man page set.
Not that I'm going to switch to Windows anytime soon---I only use Windows 2000 for eve-online, 'cause WineX doesn't support directx 9 yet, and i'm an addict (savage battle for newerth is native linux, though).
I just will have to keep fighting the nagging issues (easier than fighting the giagantic issues that Windows has (more sort of inconsistency and instability problems))
Cheers,
WhiteWolf
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.
Jump the linux ship, done that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? It's been my humble opinion that Linux has been a bit of a bastard child. Is it a desktop OS, or a server OS? Its flexablity is its greatest strength and its achellies heel at the same time. With no standards between distros on simple things, like the path to PERL, can cause headaches for software developers. I once work on a project where we had to code three different versions of an app, one for RH, another for Mandrake, and one for Debian. After that expirance, I got fed up with the Linux Platform about the same time as Mac OS X.1 came out.
FreeBSD was/is designed as a server OS first, and if you want to toy with it, it can also make an effective workstation. However this is where Mac OS comes into play: There are companies that are publishing commercial software for the platform. So I can interface wtih 90% of the web design/graphics world that use Photoshop, dreamweaver, QuarkXpress, and other such programs where as due to the pain in the ass Linux is to port across distros, commerical companies WON'T port their products. I will even admit to having MS Office, and I actully LIKE it on mac. It works wonderfully.
While the OSS community has developed some kick ass apps, like the ERP module OSSuite (NOLA I think is the sourceforge project) is what I use to keep track of our business's accounting needs including payroll, W-2's, inventory, etc., there is still a vast void of software needs outthere. GIMP is certianly not a photoshop killer. Back in the days of PS 4 and 5, GIMP looked like it was on the track to possible create a much better product, but as now it seems as though GIMP has made very few improvements over the last two years and it still takes a lot more time and effort to get the same results as Photoshop. Photoshop 7 now blows GIMP away in my book.
The two Linux servers I have still are Sun Cobalt Raq servers and I still use them because of the ease of maintance, but all my ecommerce sites are on FreeBSD machines and I have had very little problems with these boxes. Hell two are still running FreeBSD 3.4 and had uptimes of like 250 days until I patched OpenSSH and several other updates two weeks ago.
RH and SuSE are getting closer to getting Linux from Geekdom to mainstream as SuSE is large in Europe. I used it when I studied over there for semester as the school had a windows lab and a linux lab, but that is mainly a result of GUI installers and KDE & GNOME.
At our new business, I have FreeBSD on both of the terminals (we inheirted two PIII 700 Dells & 3 PIII 550 Gateway's when we bought the business) and instead of paying $2500 for four new computers, I slaped FreeBSD 5 with KDE on there, install mozilla and linked them to the office server which is configured as a local webserver with no outside pipeline and we use OsCommerce as our POS system.
Now this article is a bit trollish about jumping ship. I stats and as Mark Twain wrote, "Lies, Damn Lies, and Stats". Approach with caution. OSS software is starting to get looked at, I work as a independant tech consultant, and Linux gets the press thanks to RH and SuSE providing what Linux needs to get into main stream: commericalization. There is a number you can call for support, if you need it.
Re:Losing some Linux users. (Score:2)
Re:Its from .NET (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its from .NET (Score:3, Informative)