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USA Today says "Linux waddles from obscurity" 474

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-when-usa-today-gives-you-props-you've-made-it dept.
JCallery writes "The Money section of Monday's USA Today carried a feature article entitled "Linux waddles from obscurity to the big time Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute". It carries a discussion of time and monetary savings in business, basic Sun and Microsoft arguments against Linux, growing popularity with Wall Street, Hollywood, and government organizations, and the credibility of Linux due to alliances with other industry companies."
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USA Today says "Linux waddles from obscurity" More

USA Today says "Linux waddles from obscurity"

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  • Linux is the only option. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:34AM (#4017974) Journal
    With the price of WinXP, even though I do like it, it's way too prohibitive to run throughout an entire business.

    The functionality is pretty close to that of WinXP, so why pay $300 a copy? Sure it requires a bit more elbow grease to get configured just right, but it works great, and with distro's like Mandrake, it's almost easier than Windows to install...
    • Who pays $300? On the price of a new PC Windows XP adds about $100. For that you also get support from the vendor (in my case Compaq). Go buy a PC with Linux preloaded from someone like Dell. It's usually the EXACT SAME PRICE.

      The idea of loading up an unsupported OS from download makes most managers nervous. They'll happily pay the $100.

      • Re:Linux is the only option. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ericman31 ( 596268 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:55AM (#4018149) Journal

        The idea of loading up an unsupported OS from download

        I'm an IT manager and it doesn't make me nervous. I can purchase a CD set of RedHat 7.x with whatever level of support I want. I can purchase one copy of it and install it on ALL of my PC's and servers. That means I can purchase all of my computer equipment that will run Linux with no OS installed, saving anywhere from $100 to $10,000 on the price of the equipment.

        Get the facts a bit straighter

        • Where I'm interning right now we can purchase one copy of all MS software for use on all our Desktops too. Of course, that doesn't cover the servers. And the cost is about $300000/yr, which includes support and updates to all software.

          The main reason is because the user want Windows. The team here would very much like to go Linux, but the users are the real hold-up. Honestly, $300000 / year could do a lot here.
          • The users don't know what they want. They'll just use whatever is in front of their faces. What they don't want is to have to "re-learn" their software.

            And they don't have to relearn much of anything, if they have the right Linux (Windows-Like) environment put in front of them (Lycoris, Mandrake, Suse... Etc). It isn't like you have to force a Gentoo and Blackbox machine with Star Office 5 and Pine in front of the users. There are choices.

          • The main reason is because the user want Windows. The team here would very much like to go Linux, but the users are the real hold-up. Honestly, $300000 / year could do a lot here.

            You might be surprised at what your users "want".

            Sure, many have invested their precious time in climbing the learning curves of Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. and can't be bothered to learn alternative open source applications.

            But others, usually the more technically adventurous types (like yourself) are willing to try out something new, to invest the time just in case there happens to be a reward for the risk.

            Most sites just use Linux as an under-the-radar server OS that is cheap and reliable.

            But do take the next step of building up a nice desktop version for your site. With a little tuning, the new Linux desktops can be made into something productive for your users.

            After a while, others will notice the new boxes and Linux growth will sell itself as people begin to ask questions that never get asked in the monoculture environment where there are no alternatives.

      • >On the price of a new PC Windows XP adds about $100.

        That's home edition. Its so castrated, I, a home user, am entirely angered after purchasing it.

        I decided to set up a samba domain server to make my life of logging in between my laptop and my XP desktop easier. I like to keep settings between logins, and I like to keep my bookmarks between sessions. I also like a little privacy.

        Lack of Domain support in XP Home Edition makes this impossible. Removing this feature is like selling a door that cannot have a deadbolt added to it. No thanks.

        And, over here, in most shops (such as future shop) Windows XP Professional is $500 [futureshop.ca]. Blech!
      • Yeah, because Dell has to pay MSFT for every computer they produce, whether it has Windoze on it or not. It is called the Microsoft tax, and that is why real geeks roll their own PC!
    • It's not the only option. There are the BSDs, for example.

      But you are right about the fairly easy install of Mandrake, which I tried recently. It was one of the easier installs I've done. And getting things going that weren't part of the default install for the way I had selected turned out to be almost trivially easy.

      I still do use Windows, for now, but I think things are at the point where I could make the jump to Linux without much difficulty. It's now not that things are hard or even obscure as they had seemed before, but just different.

      The big thing for some might be Windows-only programs they need to run, especially for work. At home the transition can be eased by using cross platform programs where possible on Windows, so that when (if) a jump is made the transition isn't so jarring as many of the applications will then be familiar.
    • The problem is of course that any business large enough to have enough machines where $300 a machine is a costly amount, also likely has some "Enterprise level" crap ass software that only works with windows (Exchange, most any CRM package, most any financial package)
    • Most people are going to see XP right next to Mandrake or Redhat. When I was in Staples/Best Buy I see Linux listed for $100+.

      Now, people know that XP runs all software and know that Linux is lacking in that department (if they know anything at all).

      $300 for XP or $100 for Linux... It's an easy choice for a user.

      • You may see Linux listed for $100+, but you don't have to pay for it. It can be downloaded for free or you can legally copy the core disks from a friend. At that, $100 is still less than $300.

        XP does not run all software. XP runs all Windows software. It can no more run a Linux binary and than a Linux box can run a Windows application.... oh, wait a minute... there are emulators such as WINE that do allow Windows apps to run under Linux. Score one more for Linux.

        There are native Linux apps for every purpose that I need. I run StarOffice currently for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Konqueror works great as my web browser. I can scan, burn CD's, watch DVD's, play games, listen to my MP3's, etc. What am I not able to do that you can do under Windows.

        The only places where I see Linux having a disadvantage is in the commercial software market. The software is not on the shelves of your local Best Buy.

        Some people consider maintenance/configuration to be too hard under Linux. I would argue that yes, it takes more work up front, but once you've done that work you can rest easy. With Windows, I'm always wondering when the next lock-up will happen.

        I believe that what you've said matches peoples' perceptions. But in this case, perception is not reality.

      • You'll also see Mandrake right next to that for $24.99.
    • Debian has a very easy install, as well. You can burn a 30 meg "minimal" install CD, and everything else will be installed over the net on an as-needed basis. And the "stable" Debian branch probably has better QC than any distro out there.

    • Re:Linux is the only option. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by angryty ( 464324 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @12:16PM (#4018759)
      Way off base. Linux does not compete with WinXP - but with Windows 2000 Server. Only the most dedicated linux fan (and might I add, techno-literate) would tempt the fates by using Linux on the desktop - at least at a business that intends to make money.

      $300/desktop is too expensive to run through a whole business? We've been doing it for years and believe it or not, we're still profitable. In fact, most companies that use Windows like it.

      Here at "work" we send and receive e-mail with attachments in Word and Excel. People freak out when some backwards company sends us WordPerfect or Lotus SmartSuite documents. Heck, even Word 97 files throw some people for a loop. And yet, for some reason, you seem to think that people who use XP at home and Word at home will somehow think that Linux and K-Word are "easier", "more powerful", "more user friendly"?

      Puh-lease. Make the argument that the Mac is better for the standard knowledge worker and you have a discussion. Make the argument about Linux being better for the desktop and you have an agenda.
  • "Sun has derided Linux, which is continually improved by volunteer programmers around the world who believe software should benefit society, as a ''bathtub of code.'' With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says."

    And that is Linux's best feature and Linux's worst enemy. Compatibility!

  • Linus is still obscurity (Score:4, Funny)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asv@@@ivoss...com> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:37AM (#4017995) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    What a long way Tux has traveled in the 12 years since Linus Torvald

    Torvald? You think USA today could manage to get the creator's name right? I've never seen an article misspelling Gattes, Balmy, and Ilison. Other than that, you couldn't ask for a better PR article for Linux.

    • Torvald? You think USA today could manage to get the creator's name right?

      Have you ever read USA Today before? It's like the MTV of the print news industry. Lots of pretty pictures and flashy colors. It does not surprise me that they spelled his name wrong.

  • What we need now are USA Today polls and graphs (Score:4, Funny)

    by Navius Eurisko ( 322438 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:37AM (#4017997)
    that have a Cowboy Neal option. :)

  • Wow... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Meefan ( 526525 )

    Nothing like paying good money to read newspaper reporters restate the painfully obvious.

    "Breaking news: Some Americans now driving to work in lieu of walking!"

    Dave

  • Upstart (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Citizen of Earth ( 569446 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:39AM (#4018008)
    Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute

    It never ceases to amaze me how an 11-year-old implementation of a 30-year-old design is called an "upstart".

    • Re:Upstart (Score:5, Funny)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:59AM (#4018187)
      It never ceases to amaze me how an 11-year-old implementation of a 30-year-old design is called an "upstart".

      For the same reason that a structure based on a 2000 year old design, using 50 year old construction techniques, materials developed anywhere from 10,000 years ago to 20 years ago, and architectural designs that are ten years old, is still called a "new building" when it is built.

      For that matter, the hardware all our operating systems run on is based on a 70 year old material sciences, a basic transister design that is 60 years old, and semi-conductor technology that is at least 40 years old.
      • right, and if i were building a bridge, and the civil engineer i contracted said "i'm not going to use any of this "old" technology, i'm going to do everything from the ground up with NewTechniques that have never been tested"

        i'd fire him on the spot.

        time to stop re-inventing the wheel - we've got perfectly acceptible wheels, now its time to perfect and hone them.

  • This is why I hate reading about IT in the media (Score:5, Insightful)

    by qurob ( 543434 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:40AM (#4018010) Homepage
    The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.

    What they'd do, upgrade from 20mhz Sun boxes to Pentium III 933's?

    These kind of performance comparisons are just SILLY
    • Since the article says that each Linux server was over an order of magnitude cheaper than each Unix server, I suspect that they now have more of them at work. They should have been more specific about the cause of the speed increase.
    • Those kind of comparisons aren't silly, they're real world.

      In the real world you upgrade pathetic old equipment with powerful new equipment. I upgraded from an old AIX box to a new one and acheived a 500% speed increase.

      Sure comparing new equipment to old isn't fair, but the speed you gain is real.

      Linux just enables you to make these gains at a very low cost.

    • No, they're not silly (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "These kind of performance comparisons are just SILLY"

      Not really. Go price an Sun 450 with 4 processors. Then price an equivalent Dell/Compaq.

      Oh wait...not fair...the midrange sun only goes up to 450mhz. To get the fast processors you talk about, you have to go top-of-the-line Enterprise and pay 6 figures.

      Not fair at all, is it?

      I like sun stuff, but they're servers are WAAAAAAAAAAAY overpriced for the performance they bring to the table. Years ago, they were the P/P king because they were being compared to RS/6000's and HP/UX machines. They were less robust, but a lot cheaper. Now when they're compared to white-box priced equipment, they lose.

      Live by P/P, Die by P/P.

      Sun should know better.

      • Re:No, they're not silly (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pmz ( 462998 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:51PM (#4019542) Homepage
        Go price an Sun 450 with 4 processors. Then price an equivalent Dell/Compaq. ...

        Sun should know better.

        Interesting thing is, I would still take the Sun E450, since Dell or Compaq don't sell an equivalent machine. The 450 will hold five independent SCSI controllers for 20 drives. All in one enclosure. It's also robust as hell. They don't have to cost more than $10,000, either, if you find a good used one. Plus, once you find out just how much work an E450 can do, it just might be the only server you need for much of a small company's infrastructure.

        Sun competes on things beyond price/performance. Consistency and reliability are one such thing. A more balanced architecture is another (576-bit memory busses, SCSI/FC-AL standard, large CPU caches). Well-engineered enclosures is another. I would also bet that each Sun server design goes through much more testing and quality control than most Intel-based servers (I've read that the UltraSPARC CPUs have a very low errata rate relative to Intel CPUs).

        Sun still makes a strong case for itself in its markets. In some ways the prices can be hard to stomach, but, if a company is to the point of affording a real IT infrastructure, they should be as concerned about risk as much as they are up-front cost. Sun equipment tends to be low-risk and very long-lived. It is somewhat harder to claim this for Intel-server Brand X, although I'm sure there are a handful of winners out there.

        A lot of these arguments apply to IBM (Power), SGI (MIPS), and other hard-core UNIX server companies as well. The prices vary pretty widely, but they all share a core quality that makes them worthwhile as a long-term investment.
    • I think the point was Linux allowed them to upgrade to servers using commodity components instead of RISC based proprietary servers running Unix. The performance of commodity servers has really caught up with most RISC servers, except at the high end. Also, while the comparison is uneven, it is a real world situation. Most companies go from the stone age systems to bleeding edge, then repeat the cycle many years later.

  • Microsoft FUD Parroted (Score:5, Informative)

    by Steve B ( 42864 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:40AM (#4018015)
    The main flaw I found in the article was the paragraph:
    Microsoft paints Linux as a threat to intellectual property rights. Software developers who make their applications Linux-ready risk losing their proprietary products to the public domain, Microsoft warns.
    The lack of rebuttal, and use the word "warns" (which implies a notification of a real threat) rather than a more correct one such as "claims" or "asserts", gives undeserved credibility to this shibboleth.
    • The lack of rebuttal, and use the word "warns" (which implies a notification of a real threat) rather than a more correct one such as "claims" or "asserts", gives undeserved credibility to this shibboleth.

      As a journalist, one should never use such words as "claims" or "asserts". Why? Because both words inject the idea that the JOURNALIST doubts this. Microsoft "warns" is clearly attributed to the MICROSOFT. (To be a real stickler, it should be says/said) Further, the use of PAINT should certainly be enough for you. It implies that this is microsoft's "deliberate attempt to take certain materials and make them look like IT wants them to look". Don't require the writer to be biased towards your side. Especially when you're right ;-).
    • Just a little later on, it states:

      ''All the noise and optimism of the early adopters doesn't in any way guarantee Linux will cross into the mainstream,'' says Peter Houston, Microsoft's Windows server products director.

      What this tells me is that M$ is in a state of denial. So be it. All it means is that some day, perhaps a few years from now, a sea of change may sweep over the IT sector, and M$ will be fighting for its life.

      If I were Billy, I'd be lobbying Congress to enact laws that would ensure my existence - how a law that mandates that the government fork over the cost of one XXXP license (or whatever it's called by then) for each citizen on an annual basis? What better way to insulate against unauthorized copying? And, what better way to waste taxpayer money? It's all there - a perfectly American plan.
  • "Linux has matured faster than any operating system in history because of the beauty of the collaborative...
    For a second there, I thought all Linux junkies were being thrown together with the Trekies!

  • 17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by isa-kuruption ( 317695 ) <kuruption@@@kuruption...net> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:42AM (#4018035) Homepage
    Then Dresdner discovered a bonus: Linux, the upstart open-source operating system, was not only cheaper -- but also faster. The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.

    Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here! What kind of machines were they running before? SparcStation 2's? These machines must have been 10 years old! There is no way just simply switching from SOME-OLD-UNIX(R) to Linux is going to improve the performance this much. I'm sure they would have seen a similar performance increase if they upgraded to Sun Fire V120's too.

    In fact, there MUST have been some porting of the algorithms used to calculate this data. I'm sure some programmer looked at it, realized it was poor, 10 year old code, and modified it to run faster.

    This isn't a valid one-to-one testiment to how Linux is faster than any other UNIX system out there and really shouldn't be in the THIRD paragraph of the article! (if at all!)

    • It's probably true that a lot of details are being left out...nonetheless, old UNIX machines can be expensive to maintain due to proprietary hardware and service contracts.

    • Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If it's the London office it'll be Sun, probably recent Suns, and indeed this doesn't make much sense unless they've got fancy with SSE-2 or something. So more likely it's the Frankfurt office where they have mostly old IBM RS6000s. Although there's a lot of old Siemens Unix kit around, it's very unlikely this was used for analytics in recent years.
    • Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here!

      We're talking about USA Today here. You know, the "All The News That's Fit To Distill Into Cute Little Piture Graphs Somewhere Beneath The Full-Color Ads That Run At The Top Of The Front Page Every Fscking Day"-paper.

      Be thankful that it was at least a favorable mangling of facts...

    • Exactly. It'd make a lot more sense if they compared how long the code took to run on:

      * Linux servers;
      * Windows servers;
      * new UNIX servers;
      * Sun servers.

      Okay, so it's a USA Today article, not a tech rag, but you get the point. They still should have specified how old the UNIX servers are, and perhaps how much it would cost to replace them with new UNIX servers versus the Linux servers.

      I loathe these alleged journalists.
    • I read that with disbelief, then considered the source. USA Today is not really an in-depth reporting machine. It's either sloppy fact checking or, as you say, they left out the details of what changes were made.

      I do find it strange if the architect of those system upgrades was surprised, as the article implies.
    • Reporters rarely get anything right, especially if it doesn't involve sports or celebrities. At least the error was made in favor of Linux.
    • I bet they replaced *really* old UNIX boxes with Linux boxes. Moore's law gives you about '92 for when machines were 1/92 as fast as they are now. Probably it's a calculation they only care to do once a day, and they couldn't justify buying a new UNIX box to do it if it was still getting done on time. The thing about Linux is that you can just buy a machine if you feel like it, because the hardware is cheap. And whenever you buy a machine, it's significantly faster than the machines you had before.
    • This reminds me of a hilarious thing I once read on the Microsoft site about new features for their latest version of Media Player. It said that compared to the old version of Media Player, the new one could copy music onto CD up to 10 times faster than previous media player versions!

      Then the little '*' down the bottom said 'compared to (old) media player using a 2x CD-R drive, and (new) media player using 20x CD-R drive.'

      Well, I found it funny :)
    • Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here!

      Yep, I'd say so. For example, I just don't buy this:

      ... switch to the Linux computer operating system in 1999, it did so to save money ... So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.

      I don't care how expensive those old unix systems were (when they were new), replacing them with ANYTHING costs more than simply continuing to use the existing machines that are already owned.

      Yeah, yeah, I know, maybe they mean new unix boxes would have been $50k vs $3k unix boxen, maybe. But that's not what it actually says. The article is so loose with the language that they probably are comparing NEW boxes at $3k each to OLD boxen at $50k each. Sounds like the real benefit was computing the cash requirement faster, and a fair comparison would have actually compared the cost of new linux servers against the cost of new unix and windows servers, and the resulting performance of each. But that's a lot of work... maybe almost as difficult as it would be for Byron Acochido (the author of that article) or his editor to proof read their text from a critical viewpoint and edit it to be factually correct.

      Of course, the poorly worded loose language works in Linux's favor in this case, so it must be ok. If it were in Microsoft's favor, would I be screaming FUD?? Hmm...

      • I don't care how expensive those old unix systems were (when they were new), replacing them with ANYTHING costs more than simply continuing to use the existing machines that are already owned.

        You are ignoring the cost of a service contract, which anyone like Dresdner is going to have for a mission critical system. If Sun Microsystem's service contracts are any indication, the cost could well have exceeded $3,000/node, in which case the savings would have been immediate and very, very real. Replacing 1992 hardware with 1998 hardware and getting a 92x speedup would have been icing on the cake.

      • Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Fished ( 574624 ) <amphigory@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @12:27PM (#4018852)
        I don't care how expensive those old unix systems were (when they were new), replacing them with ANYTHING costs more than simply continuing to use the existing machines that are already owned.
        Actually, you're very wrong here.

        In Enterprise systems, you have to have hardware support - you can't just assume that the box will keep working or that you will be able to fix it. It is not at all uncommon for the hardware support costs on a very old box to be substantially more than it would cost to replace the box. This is part of how OEM's encourage people to upgrade - the older the boxes get, the more the support cost, until finally the upgrade is the thing that makes the most sense.

        Often, replacing old hardware Just Makes Sense.It's kind of like the point you reach with a car where the repair bills are more than a car payment would be.

    • If it was old enough to use tape as primary storage, then yes, the old UNIX boxes could be that slow. I'd like to see some specs on the old boxes too, but if the old machine was "PDP-11 old" or close to it, consider this:

      Dbit's PDP-11 simulator [dbit.com]

      Imagine doing table joins swapping large tables in and out of 4 megabytes of memory - or less - and imagine grinding away on the 60 hz processor. The machines they are replacing are probably not that old, but could be close. Two orders of magnitude improvement isn't that hard to believe when you think about Moore's law.

    • Re:17 hours to 11 minutes. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I wonder if they even got the bank correct. Here at Deutsche Bank we have replaced an overnight processing system which took around 8 hours on one / two Sun E10000 servers with a rack of 40 3U Linux servers. The processing time has ben reduced from 8 hours to 45 minutes, and will be halved again when we up this to 80 Boxes. The code was completely rewritten from C++ to Java (I think), so we are not comparing apples to apples but the cost reduction was 90% and the speed increase around 900%, which was an additional bonus. This was a major win for DBs Linux team, hence it may have leaked out into the press, but after this we will see a lot more applications moving to the Linux platform.

      Note that IBM and HP are pushing Linux very hard in banks, and are fining a receptive audience. The version we are using is SuSE's Enterprise Linux, which has proved a superb platform for these applications, they may have a press release about this and similar applications out in the near future.

  • Sun vs Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Zayin ( 91850 )

    That will be tougher for Sun and Microsoft. Both live and die by licensing fees stemming from their proprietary operating systems. To the extent Linux rises in corporate use, they stand to diminish.

    That might be true for Microsoft, but Sun has a huge hardware division. Why should it not be possible for them to follow in IBM and HP's tracks? To say that Sun "live and die by licensing fees" is a bit far fetched...

  • The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.

    Does anyone else seem to think that maybe their old Unix servers were considerably slower than the new Linux servers they witched over to?

  • Cost of Servers... (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by TibbonZero ( 571809 ) <Tibbon&gmail,com> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:43AM (#4018045) Homepage Journal
    So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.

    Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..

    In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware", which while Linux works on just about anything, I don't see why they didn't use 3,000 dollar each machines for Unix in the first place. I don't see a 47,000 difference, unless they were stupid and just scrapped important stuff like memory, RAID, good mobos, redundant Power supplies, etc...

    The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes

    I don't think that if they had ran the same software on the unix servers, with the same hardware, that they would have had a speed increase really. Perhaps it was that they upgraded to new servers for the Linux, and used 8 year old Unix servers? That would make a good speed difference. I am glad that Toms hardware [tomshardware.com] doesn't measure that way....
    ie. "Well, Linux certainly beats Windows 95, we put Windows 95 on an old 386sx, and Linux on a spanking new Dell server, and found that Linux must be the faster of the two..." Retards...

    Oh, an yea, I like linux, but this article is backwards.

    • Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..
      How are you sure of this? Microchannel architecture RS/6000s (don't laugh, there's THOUSANDS of them still in production) don't run Linux, and even if you can (or someone has) - the hardware is so outdated as to be pointless. I'm not familiar with the hardware from other Unix vendors, but I'll bet you'll find a lot of legacy hardware out there still in production that won't run Linux.
      In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware", which while Linux works on just about anything, I don't see why they didn't use 3,000 dollar each machines for Unix in the first place.
      You've obviously not spent much time around server class hardware. The "first place" in this case is probably 10 years ago when your only REAL options for server class Unix hardware WAS the $50k machines from the big guys (IBM, Sun, HP, etc).

      The major cost difference between desktop/consumer class hardware and server class hardware is engineering, not MHz, GBs, MIPS or any of the other numbers that people like to throw around when talking about WinTel vs. IBM/Sun/HP/etc. Try pushing millions of database records through your PC's IO bus, and then do the same with any of the big Unix boxes out there. You'll suddenly understand where those other $47k went.

      This article is fatally flawed in a number of areas, but the fact remains that the *IS* a place for "real" servers over the hopped up desktops that a lot of people call Linux servers. For what it's worth (not much), I'm a professional sysadmin on the "big" boxes, and also run Linux servers personally so I see both sides.

    • Might it be that they upgraded the servers and cut the cost by choosing linux servers in the upgraded system rather than some more expensive unix-variety? that would be a reason not to run the linux on the old servers and the explanation of the speed increase. It would also point out how cheap you can do a upgrade as long as you use linux...

    • Re:Cost of Servers... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Corrado ( 64013 )
      Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..

      The old boxen were possibly on lease. When they stopped paying for the software/maintenance, the hardware went back as well.

      In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware",

      "Enterprise Hardware" is more expensive than "Desktop Hardware". You have things like redundent power supplies, network cards, memory. Not to mention things like really big I/O busses and serious enterprise stuff that common PC hardware falls down at. This is my main argument against using MS Windows for anything "Enterprise".
    • Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..

      What makes you think that they would run Linux? The fact that they are $50,000 Unix boxes should give us a pretty good clue that these machines were NOT PC'S

      Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes

      Once again, we have a pretty good clue that not only are these not PC's, but that they are obsolete as well.

      Remember, they didn't say when they paid $50,000 for the machines.

  • Faster too...? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phoenix_orb ( 469019 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:44AM (#4018050)
    From the Article:

    The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.

    -------------
    I just woke up, but if my math is correct, this is almost 9300% faster?!? I cannot believe that just the optimizations of Linux have done that.

    Linux is fast, but they didn't even mention the fact that the new hardware was quite a bit faster then there legacy Unix systems. It is a bias in the way of making Linux appear even better, so I can't argue too awful much, but consider this point.

    No program that I have switched over to Linux (IIS to Apache, etc) have gotten that kind of speed gain. The only thing that I have seen with that kind of performance increase was when I put novell 3.12 on a P3 1.3 ghz (from a 33 mhz 486) :)

    I didn't read the article online (I read it at lunch yesterday in the dead tree edition... Had a nice army of Tuxes on the cover of the section).

    • I just woke up, but if my math is correct, this is almost 9300% faster?!? I cannot believe that just the optimizations of Linux have done that.

      You can't get more than 100% faster, or you'd have the answer before you asked the question. It used to take 1020 (17 hr * 60 min/hr) minutes, and now it takes 11 minutes; the time it takes has been cut by 1009 / 1020 * 100 percent, about 98.9%.

      Can it really have sped up that much? Yes, but it's hard to believe that the OS is the cause. They almost certainly got faster hardware when they switched, the compiler technology may be better, and if they have to consult a database to do the calculation, they quite possibly have a different or newer (and one would hope improved) DBMS.

  • from the and-when-usa-today-gives-you-props-you've-made-it dept.
    Okay, I see the point about recognition from pop media, but still - this is USA Today we're talking about. The newspaper that thinks it's a TV show, fer cryin' out loud.

    </geek type="journalism">
    • The newspaper that thinks its a FOX tv show!

      What they lack in journalism they make up for with large fonts and color.

      That being said, I like the WSJ's new(ish) color format!
  • That will be tougher for Sun and Microsoft. Both live and die by licensing fees stemming from their proprietary operating systems.
    Bull; Sun make very little from OS licensing. Hell, it's free for systems up to 8 CPUs, and everything over that size comes with an OS license. Sun make money from selling hardware, primarily servers & storage. They do sell software as well (e.g. Sun Cluster, SRM), but that's mostly so they can offer a total solution, in the same way IBM has done for a long time.
    • Sun's intital profit on hardware isn't very much.

      Where Sun cleans up and this is something they pioneered well, is the multi-layered support system which has a yearly fee for each piece of hardware (and in some cases components inside of hardware).
    • Hell, it's free for systems up to 8 CPUs, and everything over that size comes with an OS license.

      They fixed that with Solaris 9 -- they charge a couple hundred bucks for a 2 cpu version...
  • From the article:
    With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says.

    Not as long as they follow published, open standards. They may not LOOK compatible, and may not have the same, homogeneous interface, but they will be compatible. The strongest will survive the best, but the others will still be allowed to live. That is how things will be different than today.

  • The Media reaction is interesting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ericman31 ( 596268 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @10:52AM (#4018116) Journal

    For a long time the media took everything MS said as the literal truth. So today, when a newspaper that lives and dies by it's advertising is running a front page article that praises Linux and doesn't fully support Microsoft, it's an interesting situation. I'm sure that Microsoft is an advertising customer of USA Today and this article is hardly in their best interests. Will Microsoft use the same sort of threat tactics against the newspaper that they did against PC manufacturers? Probably not, since the media usually doesn't threaten easily, but MS isn't known for being smart about PR either.

    This sort of thing will become more and more prevalent though because people are interested in it, and newspaper/magazine readership drives advertising sales. Media coverage will help to build momentum for Open Source software, which will help to build interest in reading about it, creating a neat little circle that helps immensely.

    Over all a good article for the non-IT folks and helpful to the Open Source cause.

  • I love the article when it says things like "inexpensive driver of Web pages, e-mail systems and computer servers on the edges of corporate networks, Linux has begun seeping into corporate data centers where serious computing takes place" Serious Computing?? Lets see what causes the most uproard, a finacial report isn't ready on time, or your companies e-mail server is down.

    Serious computing takes place wherever downtime cannot be tolerated. That is the very reason many web and e-mail servers have been running linux. An interesting article that shows the amount of ignorance about Linux that exists "in the mainstream".

    cluge

    • you're kidding right? When the financial report is ready on time causes FAR more uproar, at least among upper management of a public company.
    • Lets see what causes the most uproard, a finacial report isn't ready on time, or your companies e-mail server is down

      depends on your definition of uproar..

      Sure lotsa people will whine when the email server is down, but if the financials are late in a publicly traded company in this market, you'll see that stock drop faster than an unpached Windows ME box on an IRC chat.

  • Every time I see a story about how "Linux is Dead on the (desktop, webserver, database server)" I wonder why I should listen to the opinions of people who helped to build the last stock bubble with companies that did nothing (but they did it fast!).

    Nobody knows how long it will take to 'correct' Microsoft's nasty effect on the the market, but remember, MS wouldn't mention Linux 5 years ago, then they laughed at it, now they're competing against it.

    I think that some in the Linux community got scared because business people were pronouncing defeat for Linux because of, well, think of any reason you can: no apps, performance and security problems, no support, lousy interface. Recently we've been seeing that those opinions were just immature impatience, as Linux adoption continues in spite of 10 years of gloomy forcasts from the pundits.

  • Quit being so negative. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El_Smack ( 267329 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @11:03AM (#4018223)

    This article isn't for us. It is for our bosses, and their bosses, and so on and so on. It is a momentum builder. So the next time you mention Linux, instead of blank stares, your boss will dig into his memory and find a positive image of Linux as a REAL OS, and it will be a little easier to get him/her to go with your suggestion to use our OS of choice.
    Use this article for what it is, and don't complian about what it isn't.

    • It may be a 'real OS', but it still has some problems to shake out. I have 4 very experienced software engineers sitting behind me (who all have background in Unix and Linux) who have switched over to Linux for development. They have all had little niggling issues that took DAYS to work out. Linux does not provide an 'easy to use' enough interface to troubleshoot and fix these problems like Windows does. Linux may be cheap/free, but there's still the adoption cycle that costs time and money. Will it be worth it over time? Well I hope so. I'd love to see Linux become more successful.

      Despite popular belief, Windows 2000 (and even XP) is reliable. Plus, it's the defacto standard that both software developers and your onboard staff can use. Linux has gotten a lot better over the last couple of years, but it still needs some end-user refinement. When the Linux community starts focusing on GUI design (as opposed to fixing 'bugs'),MS will really have something to wee-wee in their pants about.

      Take a good hard look at OSX. It's built on top of BSD. It's fully functional as an OS, and it's useful! You don't even need to know the root password to get around on OSX. The user uses it, and doesnt feel like he/she's gonna break it. The Linux Community should be observing OSX under a microscope. Apple has put a lot of design effort into this OS to make it useable. This type of usability can be done with Linux.

      Today, Linux is still a niche OS. Chalk me up to trolling if you like, but I would strongly recommend the Linux community listen to my criticisms. The worst case scenario is that Linux becomes a better product.

  • Great article (Score:2, Interesting)

    by WCMI92 ( 592436 )
    Well written, and done so that the most nontechnical (ie, the types of managers who make decisions regarding IT purchasing) can EASILY understand it.

    This article is DEVASTATING to MS... It's main point basically was:

    Linux: Better, faster, less restrictive, and you can't beat the price!

    I noted that the usual MS FUDddie-duddy response was in there, the fear of "importing your app to Linux means that you jeopardize your IP" crap.

    What shit, deliberatly aimed at implying that the GPL means that the FSF owns all programs that will execute on a GPL'ed OS...

    I believe that MS's licensing system (which leaves you open to BSA audits and ANY future condition they care to slip into the EULA for the priviledge of downloading a fix for a product defect) is FAR more "viral" than a license that simply says that "if you make use of our code to make an application you have to let the next guy build off your code"...

    The opening example of the bank that saved so much money and got a faster system as a bonus is a killer one...

    And everyone ripped MS's cost of licenses... MS can't be happy that this is running.

  • Oh, I can't resist (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Shadows ( 255371 ) <thelureofshadows ... minus physicist> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @11:27AM (#4018386) Homepage
    "Linux waddles from obscurity"

    In other news, BeOS left a sharp stinging pain.

    FreeBSD claimed the souls of the damned. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

    Sun shined brightly. Mario was unsurprised.

    Windows has been shattered.

    Unix has been castrated.

  • USAToday Hacked Again? (Score:5, Funny)

    by breser ( 16790 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @12:25PM (#4018835) Homepage
    Are we sure they weren't just hacked again and the hackers put up a Linux story this time?

  • what horrible journalism (Score:3, Funny)

    by WebMasterJoe ( 253077 ) <{moc.renotseoj} {ta} {eoj}> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @03:29PM (#4020308) Homepage Journal
    Without the pie charts, USA Today articles just can't stand on their own: Sun has derided Linux... as a "bathtub of code." With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says. What is with all the metaphors? Too many cooks splinter the bathtub? And that website is embarrassing - shouldn't they at least put a date on the article? I especially like that last statement "Linux is first on the horizon," Wicker says.Cover storyCover story - is that some sort of superliminal thing?

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