War for Linux Is Lost - Almost ?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| henke54 Dec 05, 2006 11:15 AM EDT |
Quoting:Predictionshttp://www.osnews.com/story.php/16636/War-for-Linux-Is-Lost-... |
| maggrand Dec 05, 2006 11:30 AM EDT |
um....... 'After some time the Linux development will turn too expensive for Linux vendors' Um thats why we use the opensource model. That one is rather inexpensive. Please read some basic book avout how the opensource business model works please. 'By this time the small amount of pure UNIX open source systems will occupy some very slow share of OS market' Um has that not already happen ? Or what kind of marketshare are you talking about ? 'Windows Vista will appear to be the failure the Microsoft won't overcome' Well this one i might have to agree on. But as you know Microsoft forces the consumers to get Vista as OEM software. But yes i think this will be the worst release so far. Without any valid competition the market will keep stagnant until some new Microsoft-like player Well Micorsoft have not invented a single thing the last decade and they will not do that the next comming years either. So don't worry. As it looks in europe now Linux will become the defacto standard whithin a few years and that means ALOT of things will happen in the linux area. Alot of new companys will go up and down. So expect many things from now on... |
| tuxchick Dec 05, 2006 11:48 AM EDT |
I'm still looking for a reason to take that article seriously. It's a big ole batch of unsupported suppositions. But then, that's an editorial requirement for OSNews. |
| tuxchick Dec 05, 2006 11:54 AM EDT |
oh, and regarding the original article at http://www.linfo.org/why_ms_novell_good.html, It makes some interesting points, like adding "creditability" (wtf?? presumably they mean credibility) to Linux and generating interest and publicity, and highlighting more of Microsoft's bad behaviors. But they fall into the same old trap of using the phrase "intellectual property" as though it had any meaning, and counting IBM as a friend. IBM is friends with whoever suits its purposes for the moment. Don't count on their loyalty. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 05, 2006 6:00 PM EDT |
>(ReactOS has very strong chances to replace Linux). Yes, soon we will have a direct replacement for Windows 95. |
| jdixon Dec 05, 2006 6:08 PM EDT |
> Yes, soon we will have a direct replacement for Windows 95. I thought ReactOS was aimed at replacing Windows NT. Not that that's an improvement. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 05, 2006 6:27 PM EDT |
>I thought ReactOS was aimed at replacing Windows NT. Sorry. Yes, soon we will have a direct replacement for Windows NT. You're right, not an improvement. |
| salparadise Dec 05, 2006 10:26 PM EDT |
For the business/working offices market Linux is too fractured. Too many distros with little in the way of standardisation (in as much as there are three main systems - rpm, deb and tgz). A lot of "support" companies charge a lot of money - "hey, the code is free but prepare to be raped for support costs". Knowledge is hard to find. Bigger support companies are "MS Gold partners" or equivalent and won't touch Linux for various reasons.
Interoperability is not as good as it ought to be (hardly the fault of Linux, but try telling that to a room full of people who can't access commonly used document formats).
The strongest argument for Linux is its social, moral and political basis. Again, a lot of organisations either can't or won't get into that side of things. Too many distros, (yes, we know it's a strength), to business it's a risk. Most distros don't support old releases for that long. Can you go through a complete upgrade every 6-12 months? Bearing in mind that some companies have just finished upgrading to XP, which is 5 years old and still supported. Fedora is a development bed, RHEL is hugely expensive, Mandriva are all over the place, Ubuntu has things it can't do out of the box, Novell just sold out, Slackware is largely dependable but knowledge of it is thinner on the ground than for other distros and the rest are too small to be taken seriously. Efforts are being made but businesses need an OS they know will be around, largely unaltered, for several years. Can smaller businesses afford to keep a fully qualified Linux admin on the payroll and what do they do if they can't? Go to LinuxQuestions? |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 06, 2006 2:02 AM EDT |
Quoting:Fedora is a development bed, RHEL is hugely expensive, Mandriva are all over the place, Ubuntu has things it can't do out of the box, Novell just sold out, Slackware is largely dependable but knowledge of it is thinner on the ground than for other distros and the rest are too small to be taken seriously. Hmm... sounds like Debian is your answer. It's free, large, well supported, slow release cycle and supported for a long time. Getting commercial support isn't that hard either (well, maybe large scale commercial support). |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 06, 2006 2:27 AM EDT |
>maybe large scale commercial support). HP offers Debian support. >RHEL is hugely expensive No, it's not. RHEL4 ES is less than $400/year for basic support, which ain't bad, IMO. Pay more, get more, and we're not talking $10,000+ a year that some OS projects seem to feel justified charging. The workstation (fine for file and print serving) is less than $300/year with 4 hour phone support. That's impossible to beat. I think the problem is that Red Hat and its partners want to push the high end expensive support, which still only runs $2500/year/server (and that ain't bad). Just because they want to sell it doesn't make it the best option. I am meeting with a client today who is currently running RH9 for a file server, and I expect to recommend RHEL4 WS with the 4 hour phone support. |
| salparadise Dec 06, 2006 2:36 AM EDT |
Yesssssss. I suspect you have a valid point there. As soon as the next version comes out (fairly soon I think?) I will give it some attention. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 06, 2006 2:43 AM EDT |
>(fairly soon I think?) Soon, not sure when. I have communicated with Red Hat trying to get a price, but they have yet to make that public. 5 is going to have two versions, Server and Client, and Client will be available in single units. Currently there is Workstation available as such for a client, but the Desktop solution is only available in great big bunches for network deployment, not one offs. I'm interested in seeing if their pricing scheme, which is already reasonable, changes in response to Oracle's offerings. |
| salparadise Dec 06, 2006 3:35 AM EDT |
rijelkentaurus Sorry. That reply was for Sanders comment about Debian. I'm working in the Voluntary sector where people complain about spending £40 on ink cartridges. Not to mention complaining about a lot of other stuff. Free software should, in their eyes, cost them nothing. One tries to explain, but part of the problem is that by now, there's a fair number of people with sufficient knowledge of using Windows to hack their way through problems when they occur. This use of "accidental techies" in small businesses and charities/voluntary organisations has insulated them from the costs that can be incurred in buying real world tech support. Add training to this (average cost being around £300 per day per user) and very soon "free software" is far more expensive than Windows. Thanks anyway. |
| Abe Dec 06, 2006 6:17 AM EDT |
salparadise,
Quoting:This use of "accidental techies" in small businesses and charities/voluntary organisations has insulated them from the costs that can be incurred in buying real world tech support. Very valid point Quoting:and very soon "free software" is far more expensive than Windows. But, the real question remains, after initial setup, how much support a Linux machine needs in comparison to Windows machine? Although many pundits want to lead us to believe otherwise, Linux initial installation is now far more easier than Windows. Lot less baby sitting in terms of virus disinfection, scheduled rebooting, and all the mundane daily user support because of things stopped working properly for various silly reasons. If IT groups keep a good records of how much time is pent on what, I believe Linux will still have a way better TCO in the short run and even much better in the longer run. |
| jdixon Dec 06, 2006 7:05 AM EDT |
> Can smaller businesses afford to keep a fully qualified Linux admin on the payroll and what do they do if they can't? Seriously? Contact the closest Linux Users Group. They should know who supports Linux in the area and be able to put the business in touch with someone who can help. Many small companies could probably get by with arranging for help from a local college. College students who know Linux are fairly common, and they will often work cheap. There used to be a list of Linux contractors in various areas, but I can't find it now. Added: Ah, the consultants list was a howto, which apparently is no longer maintained. The last update I could find on it was something like 1997. :( It was supposed replaced by a Consultants Guide, but I couldn't find any such creature at the LDP. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 06, 2006 7:38 AM EDT |
>Add training to this (average cost being around £300 per day per user) and very soon "free software" is far more expensive than Windows. This is often used as a blanket statement, but often it's BS. If Folks In Charge would force end users to use their PCs as work machines there would be less problems here. "How do I...?" Do you need to do it for work? Then you don't need to do it! There are legitimate concerns, but they're usually just throwing that out as BS. As far as Debian's "long release cycle" goes, that's more BS. What's important is the support cycle, and that's short compared to what most businesses want. Red Hat's is 7 years, that's more than enough. What's Debian's? We're looking at max 3 years with Sarge, perhaps less, and nothing is actually stated. Woody received updates for one year after Sarge, and they considered that generous. RHEL 4 will receive support for five more years after RHEL 5 comes out. Red Hat is the only Linux distribution I can think of that has a support cycle similar to Windows. If the support costs of Red Hat is too much, use CentOS, which has the same life cycle and is free. |
| dinotrac Dec 06, 2006 8:02 AM EDT |
Sal - Welcome to the bandwagon! I've been trying to help our fellow Linuxites understand some of the reasons why Desktop Linux is a harder task than Server Linux for years, and the informal tech support network is one of the biggest. I experienced that first hand one year that I spent as a tech writer/trainer. The sources of my material were platform developers and the audience were application developers, so lots of good geeky Unix-y folks there. However, the people I was working with in the actual creation of materials were tech-writers and managers. The tools were Word and PowerPoint. The frustration was amazing. You really don't know how buggy something is until you push it hard. The revelation to me, however, was the daily ritual of somebody uncovering a strange behavior and going to people who might have an answer until the problem was resolved. I had never realized just how much quirky behavior -- and ways around it or warnings to avoid it -- were accumulated in those people. That knowledge presents obstacles to change at 2 levels: 1. People have special knowledge that will be lost if they go to a whole new software. Not the knowledge of how the stuff works -- that's likely to be real similar to the new stuff. It's the knowledge of how it doesn't work that saves behinds. How do you convince somebody who's never used anything but weird, buggy software that any software isn't weird and buggy? How do you make them look forward to weird bugs that they don't know how to deal with? 2. All of that shuffling around costs money, but it doesn't show up on the books, so it might as well be invisible to management. Ironic there -- for all the bottom line talk, companies tend not to capture this very significant cost. That certainly tends to make ANY tech support you pay for look expensive. |
| salparadise Dec 06, 2006 9:16 AM EDT |
Just call on the local LUG's. That is too funny. We did and various people put their hand up. They either made promises that never saw the light of day or had that cartoon reaction where the eyes are replaced with dollar (in our case pound) signs. Perhaps it's the area/city I live in, but we desperately need a more giving, supportive attitude towards voluntary organisations using Linux. On a personal level I would almost go so far as to say that if you hope to make bucket loads of money from Linux then you've missed the point. But I'm just a hopeless old hippy with ideas of equality, fairness and even putting oneself out to help ones brother/neighbour. Community is vitally important. The idea of "everyman for himself" is abhorrent and utterly destructive. |
| jdixon Dec 06, 2006 11:15 AM EDT |
> We did and various people put their hand up. They either made promises that never saw the light of day or had that cartoon reaction where the eyes are replaced with dollar (in our case pound) signs. Sal, your question specified smaller businesses, not non-profits. The answers for the two aren't always the same. A small business should be willing to pay for support, though they will want to minimize the cost. For them, the local LUG should be able to help, as would checking the local yellow pages. > On a personal level I would almost go so far as to say that if you hope to make bucket loads of money from Linux then you've missed the point. I agree, but one does have to pay the bills. Volunteer support may be OK, but you can't count on it. If the non-profit needs the support, they may have to pay for it, and that means paying a reasonable cost. |
| tuxchick Dec 06, 2006 11:31 AM EDT |
Don't get me started on non-profits. "Non-profit" doesn't mean "we have no money", it means they don't pay income taxes. Every non-profit organization but one I ever had dealings with was well-funded and had paid staff. For those that aren't and need tech help, well, you can't expect everyone to support your cause. People like to get paid for their work. I beat my head on the non-profit wall a few times (slow learner). They never had any problems paying building contractors (painter, electrician, plumber, etc.) full freight, but the times I showed up to bid on the computer stuff they had this weird idea that wasn't something that needed to be funded. A good part of it was plain old sexism- I guess girls have husbands to support them, and don't need to get paid- because when it became clear I expected to get paid that was the end of it. Then as often as not my men geek friends would end up getting the job, and not for free or discounted either. |
| dcparris Dec 06, 2006 2:00 PM EDT |
Linux Consultants' Guide: http://www.commandprompt.com/community/consultants/guide/ Some listings are outdated/no longer in business - for a variety of reasons. Some are people who put their names out there because they were unemployed. But quite a few are still in business. Check it out. |
| jdixon Dec 06, 2006 2:23 PM EDT |
Thanks, DC. I looked for it, but couldn't find anything in the time I had available. |
| dcparris Dec 06, 2006 2:45 PM EDT |
No problem. :-) |
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