Latest Ballmergram Bashes Linux TCO 680
Phoe6 writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has used the software giant's latest executive email to stoke up Microsoft's fight against the rise of Linux. The 2,600 word missive was titled 'Customer focus: comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX'. In it, Ballmer repeated the key themes of Microsoft's controversial Get The Facts campaign. Zdnet has its report here." Linuxworld also has a story.
Ballmer wants to hear from you (Score:5, Informative)
If the evidence at our www.microsoft.com/getthefacts Web site doesn't sufficiently convey the benefits and value of the Microsoft platform, we want to hear from you so we can work even harder to get that information to you.
I can't wait to read the the response to his invitation.
Groklaw (Score:4, Informative)
So does the FDIC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You know.... (Score:2, Informative)
MS is sweating (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, this is just the marketroids doing their thing. When the accountants start warning [eweek.com] about threats from Linux, we know there's a real threat. Linux is getting mention in the latest annual filing [shareholder.com], too.
Re:Get the Facts Ballmer: (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/
Now take a look at this (of course only for companies for which it applies)
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/competency
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Not trying to bash on linux
Quick comparison: FreeBSD vs. Windows XP (Score:2, Informative)
CPU: AMD XP1700+
FreeBSD: 3 hours (includes: cvsupping the entire source tree, making and installing world and kernel, running mergemaster), of which 10 minutes of actual console presence is required from the system admin.
Windows XP: 3 days if you are lucky, of which constant presence is required from the system admin since you cannot predict when you will be prompted for what and what exactly is the next step.
Time is money, but forget about money for a second. Do you want to waste your life promoting Microsoft? By wasting your time trying to install, configure and maintain their products, that's just what you are doing. Making your life worth less. Worthless.
Re:Im certainly no Linux Expert... (Score:2, Informative)
When comparing the number vulnerability for vulnerability, a Windows Operating System, especially 2003, probably does have a lower number of known vulnerabilities.
OSS tends toward releasing every niggling vulnerability to the public whereas vendors often try to keep the lid on even the most serious of problems.
Stating that Windows has fewer vulnerabilities is just a sneaky way of not answering any real questions. It's sort of like suggesting that getting hit by 1000 raindrops is worse than getting hit by an entire ocean by stating that "1000 units of water falling is worse than 1 unit of water". Sure, they're both units, but they're different units, and you're not specifying what's what or what's bigger.
That said, the only way you can get a good idea of whether or not moving to Linux or FreeBSD or Windows or Solaris or anything else is a good idea for your operation is if you evaluate your specific needs, capabilities, and resources. For example, if you're going to mainly be serving a website and managing the backend, you need to evaluate the database and http server offerings available, and the underlying platforms they run on plus how those offerings run on those specific platforms.
There's too much crud flying back and forth between OSS and proprietary vendors to see clearly, which is sad. I think that the vendors - both OSS and proprietary - would be much better served working on their offerings and working with their customers rather than slinging disingenious, misleading statistics at each other and making their own customer's jobs harder.
Windoze in .edu? Bullshit on lower TCO! (Score:4, Informative)
At $142, that's $142 more you have to spend compared to FOSS solutions. What you've described, proved either that your educational institution is filthy rich and caters only for the rich and snobs, or you're just plain lazy.
Most educational institutions, whether state-run or even privately operated (esp. private with visions of education rather than for profit), are almost always tight budget! This is especially true in third world countries! That is why various bodies such as SchoolForge [schoolforge.net] (and their Case Studies [seul.org]), K12OS [k12os.org], Moodle [moodle.org], OpenSourceSchools [opensourceschools.org], KDE Edutainment Project [kde.org] and a lot more others are being founded and.. surprise! Thrives!
Personally, I love the K12LTSP [k12ltsp.org] Project. A branch out of the K12OS Project, which when deployed properly throughout the campus, can provide access to all students to high-grade apps in a very stable environment. Access from any terminal in any labs, authenticating via NIS, LDAP or whatever you prefer and access your mail accounts, website or whatever. With backend support tools available such as MySQL or PgSQL and PHP/Perl (okay, maybe that's a bit far out, but I've met 12 year olds who can code!)
Software cost? $0
Re:maybe the TCO is lower (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, there's a security system I'd be proud of.
You can mod this comment down, but you can't propose a security system like THAT to a company interested in protecting their assets. WAKE UP SLASHDOT.
IHBT. Still:
First off, lots of large companies protect their assets using the standard UNIX security scheme, so that part of your argument is a non-starter.
Further, if you require a more flexible ACL scheme for some reason, you can always use SGI's XFS filesystem, which has had fairly good support for ACLs for quite awhile.
Or use IBM's JFS, which likewise has ACL support.
I believe that there are patches available which will add ACL support the ext2 and ext3.
So, in summary: Plenty of folks get by without problems with UNIX permissions, but if you want ACLs, they're readily available. Go ye forth and troll no more.
Re:maybe the TCO is lower (Score:2, Informative)
Re:maybe the TCO is lower (Score:5, Informative)
32, I believe. Still, it isn't perfect, and we should perhaps look at ways to improve it.
Only one group can have permissions applied to a file?
Not true. All major Linux filesystems support POSIX ACLs now, enabling you to apply whatever permissions you like.
And no group nesting allowed?
What are the security benefits of allowing this? Personally, I am not aware of any, as I believe whether it is allowed or not the systems are actually equivalent -- it is merely an implementation detail that should be ironed out by any reasonably well written management system.
You can mod this comment down, but you can't propose a security system like THAT to a company interested in protecting their assets. WAKE UP SLASHDOT.
Even without ACLs, it is more than adequate for 99% of companies. Hell, most of them wouldn't want to spend the admin time required to manage anything more complex.
Re:Get the Facts Ballmer: (Score:2, Informative)
Hmm, I use Alias Maya on Linux; it is just like the Windows version, except that it's faster and doesn't crash all the time.
Re:right......... (Score:2, Informative)
So the statement may be true, but it ignores the extenuating circumstances.
TCO (Score:4, Informative)
However, I also appreciate the fact that said company is never going to have to pay for a software and/or operating system upgrade ever again. This is called smart spending. You shell out money in the short term to save significant amounts of money in the long term.
Speaking from experience here, my company has switched every machine in our office to Linux, both servers and clients, and we've saved a bundle in the long run by doing so.
Re:read the words (Score:3, Informative)
I see many of you nodding your heads that this is true, but is it really? How many of you run Linux on something that wouldn't run WinXP? Sure, MS claims that XP will run on anything marginally better than a Sinclair ZX81. Experience says otherwise.
BUT, you can run a decent Linux installation with less. So if I don't have to upgrade my CPU, memory and potentially other components in the name of upgrading to XP or 2003, just how valid is that claim that a switch over to Linux and open source software will be 3 to 4 times as expensive. Who says that it will ALWAYS be more expensive?
Re:From Linux to Windows (Score:3, Informative)
Please feel free to continue cracking on virus vulnerabilities, patching issues, lack of flexibility and even cost. But my experience is that people who crack on the stability of Win2K servers and above either don't use them or horribly misuse them. Real Win2k admins simply don't have an issue with stability.
TW
Re:Get the Facts Ballmer: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Get the Facts Ballmer: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Windows TCO (Score:3, Informative)
Have you considered that "DFS" might be a solution looking for a problem?
For example, from the DFS FAQ (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techi
For example, if you have marketing files on multiple servers in a domain, you can use DFS to make it appear as though all of the marketing files are on a single server.
So why would you have marketing files on multiple servers in a domain? This is a symptom of a larger organizational problem: the balkanization (if you will) of storage by most companies. The way most companies solve their storage problems is by buying another server, typically with a couple hundred GB of storage.
Then they have issues like "Susie, if you need the marketing files from 2002, they're on the server called HARPO, but if you want the ones from 2003, they're on GROUCHO because HARPO ran out of space. And the 2004 files are on MOE. Or maybe CURLY, I can't remember, ask the help desk."
The issue isn't "Linux doesn't have DFS", the issue is "most companies manage storage (and knowledge) poorly".
Many corporate storage problems are a result of poor workflow, poor process management, and an insatiable need by most management grunts to cover their asses by saving EVERYTHING no matter what instead of assessing what really needs to be saved, and organizing it in a way that makes sense to the organization.
The solution to the problem isn't "use Windows because it has DFS and UNIX doesn't" but "disconnect storage from processing". Don't buy more disk by buying another server...just buy more disk, or better yet, figure out why you're using so much disk and solve THAT problem instead.
It is easy to get caught in the "server == disk" trap, because you have companies like Dell selling "servers" for $1000. That's great for the short-term, but the long-term costs go up, up, and up as complexity increases and the need to have more admins to manage that complexity increases along with it.
The long term solution is to understand that you will ALWAYS want more disk, and plan accordingly by buying a "real" server that can accept external arrays, etc. or better yet, buying a filer solution from Hitachi, Network Appliance, or similar. The short term cost will be higher, but its just hardware so you can depreciate it anyway, and the long term costs will be tremendously lower. And your DR (disaster recovery) processes will be much cleaner and more robust.
In the spirit of Ballmer's e-mail, the TCO on a filer solution is much lower than a corresponding TCO for managing several, or dozens, or hundreds of servers, each with a couple hundred gigs of storage on it (not to mention server OS licensing costs, archiving software costs, etc).
Heck, if an organization is REALLY smart, they won't even use Explorer-style file management...they'll have an intranet where people search for what they want in a browser, with the results coming from a DB and all they do is click on the "download" link which retrieves the file for them. They never, ever have to know where the physical file even resides.
Re:maybe the TCO is lower (Score:3, Informative)
<rant>
I'm sorry, but comments like these only make you appear incredibly ignorant; when did you use Linux last? In 1994?
Linux Myth #1: Kernels must always, ALWAYS be compiled by hand. It is utterly impossible for distributions to provide a packaged kernel.
Linux Reality #1: Welcome to the world of package management! With just every distribution, kernel upgrades are trivial, and are identical to upgrading every other piece of software on your computer.
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgradeWhat's that? New kernel installed? Gee, that sure was tough!
Linux Myth #2: Distributions are confusing, and the process of selecting which one to use is a time-consuming process. Once you've selected one, you must review the decision over and over.
Linux Reality #2: Distributions are largely the same, and the selection of them pretty much boils down to personal preference. Some distributions provide benefits that some others don't, but the difference in most cases is marginal, and not worth hours of deliberation.
In any case, if that is too much work for you, here's a handy list:
Of course, there are other distributions you can use that I haven't mentioned, but it's all about choice. Like I said before, the difference between distributions is relatively small and widely overblown.
Give me a linux that does all this in an easy to use manner, and I'll switch.
Linux Myth #3: People would use it, if only it weren't so damn tough.
Linux Reality #3: People don't use it because they are comfortable with their misconceptions, and have few current motivations to reconsider them. If you were serious about the above statement, you already would have switched. Linux is not difficult; it is your being wedged in the Windows paradigm that has you stuck there. The same is true in reverse; it's just as difficult for a Linux administrator with zero Windows experience to migrate over to Windows.
You don't have to compile kernels. Hell, with packaging, you don't even have to compile any software whatsoever. Upgrades are simple. When shit does hit the fan, you have plenty more options available to you to discover the source of the problem. Many distributions' installation processes are almost entirely automated, requiring the user to make less than 5 choices the entire process.
Is Linux perfect? Of course not. Is it better than Windows? It really depends on the situation: the intended use, the overall cost, and the skill of the administrator. But using age-old excuses like "compiling kernels is hard" and "there are too many distributions" to justify you staying put with Windows is either a cop out or simply being severely uninformed. And even if it wasn't, a good system administrator should be exploring new territory, and trying things that open up possibilities even if they are difficult at first.
</rant>
Re:From Linux to Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Note this little oblique SCO reference (Score:3, Informative)
But as the Yankee Group commented in an independent, non-sponsored global study of 1,000 IT administrators and executives, Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO Comparison, things aren't always as they seem: "All of the major Linux vendors and distributors (including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell [SUSE and Ximian] and Red Hat) have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification."
Obviously they are talking about SCO's false claims there. Fucking opportunistic bastards! Regardless of whether or not the conspiracy theory is true, that MS prompted SCO's frivolous lawsuit to discredit Linux, the fact of the matter is that they are trying to make use of it in their PR. Whether it was planned from the start or not, either way that is now part of their strategy now, the deceptive bastards.
Call this a troll if you will, but I don't apologise for being honest.
Re:From Linux to Windows (Score:2, Informative)
It's only unprofitable if... (Score:1, Informative)
I know of an actual case of 4 years uptime in continious service for a Linux Red Hat 6.2 server running DNS, Squid and and another app. Once per week a cron job cycled squid for a minor memory leak.
It lost it's 4 year mark as the building power. Booted like a charm afterwards.
Most management didn't know it existed because it didn't cause problems like so many Windows systems. In fact this is where a properly setup Linux system really scores on Microsoft OSes. And never really factored into TCO.
Until management wakes up and stops listening to the market bu#$%(it so often payed for by the people with billions - we are stuck wuth patch, pray and tons of maintenence on a '60s message passing kernel with inadaquate memory bounds checking and so many holes it couldn't leave port if it were a ship.
Or like a real good recent humor, "unstable like Charles Manson".
The number one reason Microsoft doesn't release source? There are so many as of yet undiscovered holes it makes the universe look small.