Linux Growth In The Workplace Slowing 181
BrainSurgeon writes "According to a Business Week article Linux growth numbers have slowed for the first time since SG Cowen & Co. began tracking it on their survey. The biggest reason for the slow down according is due to the hidden cost of consultants." From the article: "That doesn't mean overall Linux use is slowing. The survey only shows that a smaller number of companies not using Linux plan to try the software than in previous surveys. Most analysts expect Linux use to grow at the companies that have already rolled it out -- and do so at a healthy rate. And analysts say Linux is picking up steam outside North America, which the Cowen survey doesn't cover."
it's a botched management analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect the company quoted in the article had a lot of developers who knew what they liked and liked what they knew. The idea of learning a new OS and new APIs didn't really appeal to them, so they just said "we can't do it!" and went off to hire new people.
I dunno. The other theory sounds more likely - Linux is competing very well with older UNIX based installations but isn't attacking the low end server market as well as it could (ASP compatibility?). And desktop is still at the "we're starting to take this seriously" stage rather than "mass deployment every week" stage.
I read somewhere that this study was itself funded indirectly by Microsoft, but who knows. The survey data seems credible. That said a reduction in the number of groups who said they were planning to evaluate it dropping a bit doesn't necessarily mean growth is slowing. Maybe it just means a lot of them got around to it? ;)
Will it matter in the long run? (Score:4, Insightful)
At that point only the 'big boys' will be able to play..
Microsoft has a *lot* of money in the bank, and can afford to be very patient on regaining their domination..
Re:How does it compare with Windows growth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Meaningful survey results? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is: Many companies say they're not switching or thinking about switching, and many of these same companies have no idea that they use this stuff. The people being asked are not necessarily the ones who know. And as I've shown, not only at my employer's company, but also at some other places I've moonlighted for as a poor-man's IT consultant of sorts, many functions can be switched over to Linux to gain higher robustness. The servers running this stuff can be in a closet somewhere. I install everything, back it up, turn it on, and then they forget that it exists, because it Just Works (tm).
So I'm not too sure that these survey results are meaningful.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
VB developers.
You are probably right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Java servlets? Java is Java is Java. Perl is, well, Perl.
What does that leave? Well, ASP. asp2php and other conversion tools help, but that would need new skills. MySQL and PostgreSQL are different from Access and SQL Server, but the GUI managers out there are plenty good.
There's the business of configuring Apache, but there are GUI tools for that, too. In fact, between the excellent stand-along GUI tools you can get off Freshmeat, that come with Fedora, or are provided with Webmin, I can't think of much you can't do with Linux in a purely graphical context.
This means that when people complain that Linux isn't "friendly enough", what they really mean is that they're determined not to like it, that when they complain they can't use it, what they really mean is that they don't want to.
There's nothing wrong with choosing not to like something, but it is better to be honest about the fact that it often IS a choice and not something intrinsic about the target.
Re:I am not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they make programs so other windows people can point and click their way to IT glory.
Seriously though I agree but it depends. I mean, if you take a VCC guy and ask him for a KDE app, he *SHOULD* be able to do it with a little studying. If the server application in question is just some database interface or server program, the code is 99% the same. Sounds like laziness to me.
What BS (Score:2, Insightful)
Try the reverse. Try landing a job doing Windows programming when you've only had Unix/Linux experience. Again, do you think they might be asking for that experience for a reason?
But there isn't always someone to take over... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's really not true, you know. If Sun stopped supporting Star/OpenOffice, or the guys at MySQL gave up and went home, I'd give you great odds that it would pretty much kill future development of the corresponding product as well, open source or not. You might get the occasional bug fix or minor patch, but that's probably it.
The harsh reality is that just because you've got the source code to something doesn't mean you can instantly be an expert in how it's been designed and all the little things that were learned along the way, nor competent to continue development as if you were the original dev team. This has nothing to do with being open source; classical closed source businesses have been facing this dilemma as a matter of HR management for as long as there's been software development. Moreover, even a relatively weak dev team doing this stuff professionally usually generates better documentation than most F/OSS projects seem to, and there's usually more continuity even if some of the original development staff leave.
Open source projects that are widely distributed in more than one version by somewhat independent groups -- in other words, Linux -- are a good bet for future-proofing. Open source projects that are widely distributed in only one version with only a few core developers -- in other words, pretty much everything else, including the other big names -- are not good bets. In fact, if future-proofing is your biggest concern, the most robust option is to get it written in-house, with an emphasis on good documentation and testing procedures, and with solid management overseeing the work. Failing that, you might well be better off going with something provided by a megacorp that employs vast numbers of developers and has vast financial reserves.
Re:How does it compare with Windows growth? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also a number one would expect to drop over time anyway - think of the early linux adopters as being 'low hanging fruit' over time all the people who know what they are doing will jump ship to linux resulting in an early surge of companies who move stuff to linux, over time all that are left are those who have no reason or inclination to move ('it works I'm not touching it' which is a perfectly valid engineering decision) so I'd expect the linux numbers to drop and that's a healthy thing .... depending of course on what that missing numb er really is
Re:I thought... (Score:1, Insightful)
PS: This makes no difference for closed software that uses open data formats.
Enterprise shortcomings (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a large number of desktops (numbered in four digits) across a large number of sites (numbered in three digits). When you get to this point, the idea of a free OS isn't quite the issue. Sure, it's nice that you can pop in the RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Fedora CDs and get a functional desktop. Automated hardware detection is good when anything other than a preconfigured, flawlessly automated installation simply isn't an option. This is something that Fedora has covered, as do many other free distributions.
However, where Fedora falls short is remote management -- obviously you can update a single machine easily, but imagine having several thousand identical systems to update in a secure and timely manner.
Add the fact that when there's nobody at an installation site capable of fixing problems should they arise you need a way to test new packages and updates prior to deployment. What is needed is a way to set up groups of machines in such a way that you can push software out to them easily in a controlled manner. Set up a testing lab, for instance, and test new software in the labs before risking a breakage in remote settings. Then, when you've tested, push updates out easily, and offer rollback support if something unexpected happens.
This is the state of what Red Hat Network allows you to do (at least with their highest level of support), all via a web-based tool. You can even delegate administrative access to subsets of machines to given administrators. They promise a stable distribution, even to the extent that APIs and ABIs of provided software will not change. This is something not promised under Fedora.
RHEL clones exist, but they do not allow access to the administrative features that the Red Hat Network provides. Nor are they supported by vendors -- if your SAN is supported under RHEL and doesn't work under RHEL, you can complain to the vendor until they fix it. If your SAN is supported under RHEL and doesn't work under CentOS, there's little you can do.
Windows allows system management like this through a product called Systems Management Server. Unsupported Linux distributions don't offer the features, and they don't offer this level of guaranteed API/ABI stability and vendor support.
Yes, you can do without support. However, when you're dealing with application vendors who expect to have a known set of installed software, it's much easier when everyone is on the same page. (This is a pain when it comes to JREs required by Windows apps -- everyone wants a different version, and if you don't have enough pull with the vendor to get them to support what you've got rolled out, you're stuck rolling out yet another JRE).
Cheap software means nothing if you can't tailor your environment to your needs, including deployment, testing, and administration on a wide scale. That's why companies pay for Red Hat support and subscriptions -- because of the management tools and guaranteed support you don't get with Fedora or CentOS.
I'm ignoring Novell here entirely, by the way, but they do offer similar features. They just can't seem to make up their minds whether to push open products or ones based on NetWare. Their interoperability is wicked, but they also like to push their consulting services so it's hard to find direct information much of the time.
Finally, Red Hat's desktop stance is quite unclear. Novell is pushing the hell out of Windows migrations, but they are short on details such as pricing and return on investment (except pushing products such as ZENworks, which is similar in function to the RHN stuff I've described). You can't get any information on Windows-to-Red Hat migrations either -- all of the Red Hat case studies are UNIX-to-
Re:But there isn't always someone to take over... (Score:4, Insightful)