Linux Replacing Windows More Than Unix

LordNimon writes "Over the past couple years, we've been hearing several Linux migration stories, but they have been mostly migration from proprietary Unix systems rather than from Windows. Well, this story on News.com indicates otherwise: of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows. Sounds promising."

Interesting but..

[Derkec]

This is an interesting figure, but I'd like to see the numbers of migrations compared to past years. Is this flip because more people are converting from Windows or is it because those that are going to move from proprietary unix to Linux have already made the conversion. Are windows migrations increasing, or unix migrations decreasing? Or both, or what? This is an interesting stat, but fairly meaningless without more information...

maybe I need to read the article. :)

Even Better...

[WEFUNK]

...of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows.

On first reading I was wondering what operating systems could possibly make up the missing 45%, but it's not 31% and 24% of the *migrations* but of the total new Linux servers:

"For those that have recently purchased new Linux servers, 31 percent were adding capacity, 31 percent were replacing Windows systems, 24 percent were replacing Unix and 14 percent were replacing other operating systems."

So as a percentage of migrations, nearly half are Linux replacing Windows (maybe over 50% replacing MS systems including DOS):

45% Windows to Linux
35% Unix to Linux
20% Other to Linux

31 % adding capacity.

[Forge]

That is the REAL encoraging sign.

Sure there is the odd case of an incorectly sized server being put to a task it can't manage.

However most "Adding Capacity" is from satisfide customers who are moving other services to the platform in question or even better have grown the business so much that they need to buy more and/or biger machines.

93% of statistics are made up on the spot

[wackybrit]

Statistics are nice to look at, but often have glaring loopholes that some people choose to conveniently look over.

The biggest problem with this survey is that Unix usage has gone through the roof in the last two years with the advent of Mac OS X.

Since people who have Mac OS X are technically 'UNIX users', but are unlikely to uninstall OS X to run Yellow Dog Linux, it is fair to say that less UNIX users that ever are going over to Linux. Why? Because they're happy staying on BSD.

BSD classifies as 'UNIX'.. and we need to remember a LOT of people are going over to BSD from old style UNIX. Yet.. they aren't factored in here. Legacy UNIX to BSD is not taken into account, when really it's a pretty important shift.

Re:It Shouldn't Be Surprising...

[vadim_t]

Huh? KDE is just one project, although a really big one.

The kernel developers aren't going to turn it into a Windows clone. If you don't like KDE just use something else. I think that'll get us the best of both worlds. Those who migrate from Windows will find a similar environment. Those who like the command line will get the command line. If it becomes similar to OS X, then almost everybody should be happy with it.

Re:It Shouldn't Be Surprising...

[Dthoma]

Yes, but even if the main distros of Linux do turn into some ghastly copy of Windows, the situation is still very salvageable since someone else can just pick up the source code and fix it.

Whereas with Windows these days you're effectively paying $BIGNUM for what is pretty much a long-term lease rather than proper ownership of a buggy operating system which intrudes on your privacy.

Smug faces

[eddy]

"The remainder (46 percent) noted they didn't own and weren't considering Linux."

Somehow I can just picture the smug faces of managers answering this, like they're real proud to be MS-fanboys :-}

Re:Linux particularly replacing Windows NT and 2k

[cscx]

Can you really imagine WinXP as a workstation tool?

Yes! By all means. Most Linux fanatics just don't understand how configurable XP is. You can disable all themeing quite easily. It looks just like Windows 2000 in every respect. It's more stable as well.

This is akin to saying "Can you really imagine GNOME as a workstation tool? Or ... KDE as a workstation tool?" Get with the program, buddy, graphical is where technology is going. Just cause something doesn't boot to piss-poor console doesn't mean it's incapable.

In fact, I find my WinXP box more stable than our Linux programming labs at school. No bullshitting, either. I can thoroughly freeze the console in our Linux labs with not so much as a keypress. XP has yet to crash on me (and so had Windows 2000 yet to, before I switched).

I think we'll also see a lot more Linux-loving fags openly declaring their love for other men's bowels.

Hmm, don't know about that one. IHBT.

31% of nothing is still nothing

[jkirby]

Percentages mean nothing unless we have the numbers used to calculate the percentages. 31% of 10 is not such a big deal; 31% of 100 million, on the other hand, is significant.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'll respond as if this was not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

because as it is, the comment does have merit if looked at from certain angles. At its core, Linux has a much more stable, robust and extendable architecture... this translating to more secure, more reliable, etc. however, the problem Linux faces is not technology but social. Many developers and packagers have in the past shown a complete lack of discipline, order or consistency on major parts of the 'Linux System' as a whole. While on the surface, this is seen as good for those that want to dabble and hack, as many businesses are realizing (or suck it up stupidly because they DONT realize) it takes more than coding to develop a program.

Perhaps the infant but rapidly growing trend of documentation, standards (not just in protocols you know...), conventions, and changes will take hold and flourish. It would be great to see a patch released for 'application X' that does not REQUIRE anyone to upgrade any dependent libs, dependent apps, daemons, etc. It woulc be nice to just download and patch it much like a user can with Windows. It would also be nice to have a straight forward GUI system that actually WORKS and does not require retooling the entire system just to get it to respond correctly. I guess this goes back to the Linux as a Desktop is [dead, alive, undead, etc] argument, but while it is great as a CLI and services platform, it stinks for Joe User as a desktop. However, this is soon to be a statement only true in the past to which I am happy.

Lets show some discipline, coders. Of course the 'blame' is not really them as much as the maintainers. If you receive hacked code, then only put it in the bin for 'proof of concepts' or ideas... don't put it in the system unless you simply are not smart or experienced enough to understand the mid to long term folly of that action. After all, if you lived or worked on the 10th floor, you could very well jump out your window to beat waiting at the elevator, stairs and entrance. But would that extra saved time stack well against the extra time it takes for you to limp to your destination, the money to patch you up, or the pain that you experience each step? PLAN AHEAD! or... just hack like a 15 year old and enjoy the feeling of a very hard coded, unstable 'spit and bubble gum' program that you must walk on eggshells around... oh wait, that is MS :)

Re:31 % adding capacity.

[GigsVT]

Or, the other case I see as probably being common, they are adding another new Linux server, but keeping their legacy Windows or Novell system around because it works for them, and just running both of them, waiting until they have time to finish the migration and totally ditch the old server.

That is the current situation at my workplace (Novell), and I know we aren't alone. These phased migrations are hard to measure statistically, since there isn't a trackable event (like a purchase) when a company decides to finally ditch the old system.

We're Making The Move

[stoolpigeon]

When I came to my current job- the I.S. Director thought Linux was 'hacker junk'.

Well a lot of factors have come together and now he comes to me on a regular basis and says- "find me something open source that does such and such" We have 2 Linux servers up and running and we are looking to move a bunck of our desktops to Linux (using a browser for their apps)

The main driving reason has been cost.

.

Mac/BSD people are too self important apparently

[polarbear]

Free clues for BSD fans:

1. The percentages were for _servers_. Sorry, but apple's server market share is like 0.00001% right now ;P Every mac "server" I've seen so far in the "real world" is a lowend fileserver for a cluster macs hidden in some publishing office.

2. The only people (numerious enough to be of any statistical relevance) "migrating" to MacOS X are Mac desktop users upgrading from Macs and a small number of windows/linux/whatever converts (though judging from apple's sales figures those probably fall into "not statistically relevant")

3. I love when BSD fans latch onto Mac OS X and say stuff like "see! BSD is more used then Linux!" blah blah blah. Meanwhile most people don't give two hoots about any BSD parts of the OS (they don't see it, don't really program for it). And proprietary apple-only APIs are what developers use to get the most out of the hardware and operating system. Sorry, but your average well written native apple app is about as BSD as Windows NT is UNIX (tm) Photoshop for FreeBSD anyone? Yeah... I thought so...

Oh well... time to get mod'd ( -1, The Truth Hurts )

Re:Aye, but I'm not a Mac user.

[polarbear]

There has always been an element of the growing linux userbase that decides to move to a *BSD for various reasons (most for real reasons, matters of preference, etc, other for less then admirable users but thats troll take). Some move back (quite a few users of new distros like Gentoo, etc are former *bsd users who moved back for some reason or another or run both happily)

Quite frankly I think BSD is enjoying the "wake" created by Linux much like migrating birds fly in the wake of others to make the trip easier, etc. The Linux camps attracts the bulk of new users to the Linux/BSD camp and some naturally spill over to the *BSDs. Is that a bad thing? Nope, its only natural. But it was the early Linux advocates and zealots who created the wake... It was their open and more inviting attitude and it was later the GPL and the growing wake produced by early Linux that attacted the corporate interest in Free Unix after the BSDs lost it due to lawsuits and attitude problems.

The Macs are a special case where you have loyal mac users who would quite frankly use anything Apple gave them as long as it got the job done. Your average mac user will probably see never even know the terminal window exists or if they do, they might mutter something like "oh its dos" or "wtf is this" and promptly close it.

Any "techies" moving to this form of BSD are greatly outnumbered by more "mainstream users" and I believe are stastically irrelevant. Also any "BSD developer" on Apple is either going to be using "non-BSD" apis or not doing anything involving GUIs or the nifty features that make Mac OS X different from Windows, KDE, etc.

As I said before, some BSD fans are overestimating the importance of BSD. I doubt it will ever make an appreciable dent in the server market compared to Linux, Windows, etc. Though it will be interesting to see how far the X-server servers go, the only reason I can see to buy one is the pretty case but its a server, so why pay for a proprietary server platform when we are trying to get off of others (*cough*sun*cough*).

This year may see a lot of converts in particular

[paladin_tom]

...due to Microsoft's new licensing scheme. That's something a lot of businesses hate with something of a passion, I believe.

Re:This year may see a lot of converts in particul

[rseuhs]

I couldn't agree more.

The Winlots might say that it's not so bad or it's only for their own good (having always the same version) some other market-speak.

But there are 2 scary facts:

1: With the new licensing scheme, Microsoft is taking the power to decide away from the user.

2: Microsoft showed that they don't hesitate long to change EULAs and licensing schemes the way they see fit.

Even if it were not more expensive (but it is!) it would be hated.

Try a middle-click into IE and see what happens!

[leonbrooks]

KDE seems to be striking a reasonable balance between not terrifying incoming Windows users, and curing some of Windows' ills. Have you tried the newer KDEs? KDE 3.0.x with translucency only looks like Windows until you click on something, KDE 3.1 even more so. I don't see XP ripping audio CDs for you when you drag them onto a filesystem, I don't see it giving you a choice of cut/paste methods, I don't see protocol drivers for odd devices (think palmtops) accessible within the existing file management paradigm, and so on.

Windows 3 had fixed-sized elevators because Macintosh had them. So IRL, who is it chasing tail-lights?

Re:Where do you get 45%?

[jkramar]

Ah, you have left me more nitpicking to do:

50% of all slashdotters above the median in nitpicking.

First of all, this sentence lacks a verb. However, the main problem is than when the assumed verb is inserted, "are," then some assumptions are made which are not necessarily true. For example, for exactly 50% of people to be a whole number of people, there must be an even number of slashdotters. Furthermore, if more than 50% of all slashdotters are equally and completely lacking in nitpicking, then less than 50% are above the median, 0.

(Score: 1, Offtopic)

Re:Or Even

[tupps]

How many CIO's don't even know they are running Linux??

Statistics can lie in so many ways...

[ron_nelson]

My first thought was Woo-Hoo!

But, my second was What is the count of UNIX to Windows servers?

I suspect that the number of total Windows server installed allows a greater numerical loss while suffering a much lesser market share loss...

Re:Interesting but..

[Amiga Trombone]

Are windows migrations increasing, or unix migrations decreasing? Or both, or what? This is an interesting stat, but fairly meaningless without more information...

I think you have to consider that Linux was replacing Unix primarily at the low end. Nobody is replacing their Sun E15k with an x86 box with Linux. Objectively, Unix wasn't all that frequently used on the low end anyway, and was already largely getting replaced with Windows in that space. The opportunities for replacing Unix with Linux are probably becoming exhausted. It's probably also true that now that IT orginizations are getting comfortable with Linux, migrations from Windows are excelerating.

Liberty in our Lifetime [freestateproject.org]

Re:If it's like a lot of places I've seen. . .

[DunbarTheInept]

~Management and a few staff love Windows, the rest hate it for religious reasons.

Yes... of course... because it's impossible that maybe they have real reasons for hating it that make actual sense, oh, no, it can't possibly be that. No, let's just call them religious reasons.

Re:Even Better...

[DunbarTheInept]

Traditionally, you DO buy servers with an OS, but then quickly overwrite it with your site licensed version upon arrival. That is different from buying them without an OS. It's hard to find a vendor that will sell without at least SOMETHING pre-installed.

Here's the explanation for the moves to Linux

[Sara Chan]

The Economist [economist.com] had an article [economist.com] about this recently. Here's a relevent quote.

Traditionally, vendors have driven most big IT markets. They have been, for example, quite successful at locking in corporate customers. Once a company has deployed a piece of proprietary technology--say, an expensive package of enterprise software--it is very costly to switch to another provider. Software vendors can thus milk their "installed base" by selling them one upgrade after another.

IT buyers, however, are increasingly reluctant to play this one-sided game. They are putting pressure on vendors to make it easier for them to link the various bits of their systems. Indeed, the concept of collaborative e-commerce makes sense only if applications have a common language. What is more, vendors themselves increasingly favour open standards as a defensive strategy to neutralise the power of proprietary-minded competitors.

Being forced to do more with less, IT managers are coming to like Linux, the free operating system. Linux and the universe of "open-source" businesses that surround it are one of the few areas of the technology business that is actually growing. Almost a fifth of server computers sold by Dell now have Linux installed rather than Windows. Sun Microsystems has begun offering Linux servers, and might soon add a Linux PC to its product line.

It's a good article--worth showing your manager.

Re:If it's like a lot of places I've seen. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Management and a few staff love Windows, the rest hate it for religious reasons.

Nice bit of propaganda neatly hidden in there.

I don't dislike windows "for religious reasons". I dislike it for sound technical ones. Its architecture is poor, and I (and many others better than I) can disect the Win32 API and it's multitudinous slightly-incompatible variants at length to illustrate why.

An even people who do dislike windows "for religious reasons" may _also_ dislike it for other reasons too - people can dislike things for more than one reason at once. [This is a special case of "things can have more than one cause" that is bloody obvious to me and many others, but apparently a major conceptual difficulty for the bulk of humanity]