Linux Is Cheaper 488
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is running a story on what a lot of us already know: Linux IS cheaper than Windows. This not because it is free. It is because Linux admins, although slightly more expensive, can handle a significantly larger number of systems than their Windows counterparts."
Completely subjective (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no doubt that Linux is cheaper in a lot of situations, but I am also sure that Windows, or indeed any other OS, is cheaper for some things.
There can be no one perfect solution.
I think you mean "relative" (Score:2)
Now, it may be the problem is defined inexactly. And depending on how we fill in all the parameters to the problem we end up with different solutions. But this would make the solution relative, not subjective.
No, I mean subjective (Score:2)
Re:No, I mean subjective (Score:2)
The "peculiar" person you stick in the situation of being a sysadmin may determine the outcome of a cost-efficiency equation. But this will be the case no matter what anyone believes. This is no more subjective than my wearing a fancy and unique hat is subjective.
Of course, you could say "By 'subjective' I mean no more than being 'peculiar' to a person." And if you used it enough that way, it may actually catch on, and your usage would become correct ex post facto. But your current usage is certainly not correct according to the common usage of the term, just ask any English teacher.
Re:No, I mean subjective (Score:2, Interesting)
Person A sees Linux as being an awkward unweildy solution, and hires three people to oversee a single Linux Server because he/she/or-it cannot understand "command line" and "easy" in relation to eachother. Person A hires one person to oversee the Windows computer--hence, the cost of operation of the Windows computer is significantly less, and the Linux admins have a whole lot of spare time in which they can build robots out of spare parts, and play war games with Nerf guns.
Person B sees things in an entirely different light, and hires the same number of people, only the Windows machine gets the larger staff.
Person C is entirely competant and doesn't bother hiring anyone. Instead he converts the Windows server over to Linux and takes care of the job himself. Or maybe he converts it over to Windows. Whatever the story is.
In every scenario, the SUBJECTIVE opinions and ideas of the managerial staff is the sole reason for the higher or lower budgets per OS.
All things being equal, and with competant staff, the management cost is going to be lower for Linux, simply because of the lower cost of the OS, the software that runs under it, the increased performance-without-increased-resources issue, and any number of other issues.
In the "real world" where subjectivity reigns, the outcome of the situation will very likely be completely different, with different experiences depending on different people, the skillset of the people, salaries asked, etc. Call it the subjectivity of the Gods.
-Sara
Re:No, I mean subjective (Score:2)
But what cannot be subjective is the cost for a given scenario. Once the manager has chosen to hire X people for administering the Linux boxen, and Y people for administering the Windows boxen, it is an objective fact that one will cost more, less, or the same as the other.
The line may be blurred a bit because the manager can creatively interepret the balance sheet, placing Windows cost under "general staff", and placing Linux administration under it's own category. In this case, Windows will cost nothing and Linux will cost more, because of the way costs are interpreted.
This happens all the time in IT. I may be the only one assigned to a project, but I get someone else in the company to help me out. Suddenly less work is being done for the other guy's project and more for my own. But rarely does his salary get tagged onto the cost of my own project. So my project will seem cheaper than it really is.
So perhaps the way that costs are attributed to Linux vs. Windows is subjective. But I still don't think so. I think in the above scenario and ones like it the real problem is that there is no easy way to divide up the costs among employees working on different things. There is no good methodology for attributing costs. But I think if the methodology is subjective, it should be rejected.
I still believe the original poster was using the term "subjective" in a place where "relative" should have been used. It seems like a pedantic point, but it is important. If the cost is subjective, then neither system can ever objectively be more or less expensive than the other. If the cost is relative, however, then we put the question into more exact terms and get an objective answer.
Re:Completely subjective (Score:2)
OK so you will have someone leaping in the air shouting that Thnidnifv3.14 offers comparable calendaring to Outlook and Exchange and is just as easy to use, provided of course your users are not complete loser morons and know how to handle a punch card interface with a command set in Hierattic.
The issue for most enterprises is not the cost of their system, it is the cost of switching. Compared to the costs of mainframe software of the past Microsoft's offerings are dirt cheap.
The part missed out of the equation here is the users. I don't care what slashdot readers consider the greatest software to be, the users at my company mostly disagree. If an IT support person comes out and announces he is moving their systems to Linux whether they like it or not he is going to be fired before the end of the week.
People complain when they are forced to use Microsoft products. They should understand that others will complain if forced to use Linux or a Mac.
Baseless argument. (Score:2)
Users complain when their starting time gets moved or they have to park further from the front gate. The Manager that makes the decision never gets fired for making these kinds of adjustments. Done properly, it should be nearly transparent, just like moving a hub or adding more drive space.
Re:Baseless argument. (Score:2)
You're mind-stuck with what Windows offers on the desktop and you can't see the issue, much less any of the (yes, transparent) solutions. You've bought into the MS hype big time, and only a career change can help
Re:Completely subjective (Score:2)
Re:Completely subjective (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm responding to a troll here, but I will assume for the moment that you really don't understand the need for comparison.
Microsoft is in business to make money, and so is RedHat. Hopefully that's not a surprise. They are actually competitors, and in order to compete, and to generate revenues, they need customers to purchase their product. This is done by demonstrating to the customer that their product is better than their competitor's -- remember that customers don't have "perfect information" so advertising/marketing/education is needed. If customers already knew which product was best, then there would be no need to try and persuade customers (the merits of the product would have already done this).
Now, let's assume you're a business owner and you want to computerize your office. You're smart enough to realize that no solution will be perfect, but you still need something (if you never did anything because you couldn't find the "perfect" solution you'd go out of business pretty quickly). So what happens is you compare all of the products available to you, and you will decide, as best you can, on the "best" solution. Often cost is the primary factor, which is why Microsoft/RedHat/Sun want you to think their solution has the highest cost/benefit ratio.
There can be no one perfect solution.
While true, this answer solves nothing. If you're going to pound a square peg in a round hole, wouldn't you rather it be the cheapest/fastest/etc peg? If you can find the one round (perfect) peg, then you're ahead of the game...
Glad that clears that up (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait, the second sentence is Most analysts, if asked whether Linux has a lower TCO than other systems, will answer, "It depends."
Glad they wrote a whole article about it.
Re:Glad that clears that up (Score:2)
The Ablative Horse (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Ablative Horse (Score:2)
Like when Ginger tries to seduce Gilligan, or when Gilligan drops something on the Skipper's feet. Every episode...
He never got any of that either. Gilligan must have been really gay . Well, you know how he sleeps in the same hooch with Skipper and minces around him......
Re:The Ablative Horse (Score:2)
That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:5, Insightful)
Th-they skirt over this point a bit too quickly. The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught.
After all, how many great sysadmins spent years pouring over 'How to be a Linux admin' books, struggling to get their 'LCE' (Linux Certified Engineer) certificates? None. Unh. Yet that's exactly how Microsoft admins are raised.
Linux admins (and originally users) are experimenters.. that's why they're not on the MS platform. Experimenters make good sysadmins, because they learn by themselves, learn clever admin tricks through experience, and, er, don't just rely on a bit of paper that says 'I'm a good sysadmin.'
I'd be a bit weary about the point that Solaris admins can 'learn Linux' (ohh, unh) within a few weeks though. People from stricter UNIX disciplines think Linux is some, er, easy-to-learn UNIX renegade. (unh, unh) It ain't true folks, it's like deep and stuff.
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps. Thing is though, Windows isn't exactly that hard to maintain. The company I work for has had between 15-20 people over the last 5 years and runs on a mostly NT-based network. Have we had our share of difficulties? Sure. Have we ever needed an admin to maintain it? No. Most problems have been resolved by the people who stumbled over them. We had a sysadmin up until a couple of years ago. When he left, I absorbed his responsibilities. Yet, I still have plenty of time to post on
I'm sure there's some truth to this in bigger companies, but Linux has been nothing but a problem for us here because the one person we have who can fix the problems is overloaded.
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:3, Informative)
"Yeah well you're a Windows idiot. All you do is set it up with Linux and it just works!" -- That is basically the response I expect from my answers.
The truth of the matter here is that at the place I work everybody's computer is treated like they own it. They don't act as terminals. We don't have policies about who can install what. You own it. For a company our size, it works. People do upgrades. People install stuff. The computers move around. Etc etc.
My job is to make sure they stay up and running. I don't spend much time doing that. I don't have to do emergency Windows reinstalls. I don't have to do virus cleanup. (Despite popular belief, Outlook 2k is not that vulernable. Outlook express is another story...) I don't have to troubleshoot bluescreens. As a matter of fact, the only bluescreen I've seen in the last year had to do with my Sound Blaster Audigy card that has the worst drivers ever.
I'd be pulling my hair out right now if all the BS that gets spread about Windows was true.
(Note: We all use Win2k and the occasional copy of WinXP, Win95/98/Me was permanently banished from this office for being totally unreliable. Too bad the NT line's reputation here is tainted because of that, despite how unrelated those products are.)
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he meant when Nimda was first introduced, therefore it's not an 'old exploit'.
Don't you think you're trying a little too hard to discredit this guy? I mean, you're insulting him for his first and last experience with a problem. Sounds like he locked the problem down to me.
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:4, Interesting)
It's no wonder they cant' cut it. They have to learn about these lies once they have been hired. They have to unlearn what they have learned.
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:5, Interesting)
The Primary reason why a Linux Admin can handle a lot more systems then a windows is basicly because Linux and Unix is designed to be admined remotely and work well with shared configuration. And without the extra licensing overhead the systems can be duplicated very easly.
As the article said a good protions of the Admins are Solaris Administrators. So they have a good understanding of Linuxs features so switching to Linux is relitvly easy. And most of the Solaris Administrators have training as well.
The Only reasion why a lot MSCE seem to be dumb as bricks is more of the fact they they are on the reasioning that I am Certified so I know everything. While someone who is unsertified or without the extra Ego baggage are willing to learn from other methods and try new things.
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:2)
That's not the standard explanation that most Unix experts will usually give you. They'll say that the primary advantage of Unix (and by extension Linux) is that it was really designed to be administered by a full time admin from the ground up. So Unix and Linux have extensive built in facilities for remote administration, scripting everything, etc. OTOH, Windows was really designed to be administered by the user using desktop, GUI tools. All of its remote administration, scripting, etc. tools were grafted on late in its lifespan, so they lack the maturity and utility of their Unix equivalents.
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:3, Insightful)
And I think there's a lot more to this as well. Most Linux admins I've worked with have had deeper expertise in more areas - perhaps due to the requirement of "knowing more" to successfully operate a network application server (which Linux is typically thrown into). Yea, you'll still find a few programming language-centric admins (ugh)... but most are general purposed enough to have discovered how IP works on a server OS.
For instance, you'd better know a bit about IP and network security when setting up an apache webserver, dns server, sendmail or qmail system, etc. Most Linux admins I've dealt with subsequently are rather aware of WAN protocols.
However, throw a MCSE at a OSI layer three to five problem and they'll start blaming the version of the webbrowser or waste significant time in other application-layer space. I'd swear they never mention the OSI 7-layer model in Microsoft class.
What's worse yet is that once these junior badge MCSE techies get their certification, they're convinced they know everything about networks and end up wasting other peoples time chasing down the wrong track. These people are costly and can cause a lot of damage to an organization through their stubborn ignorance.
Maybe it's the learning model predicting the kind of employee; e.g. MCSE is often class-fed, much like cattle finished off at the feed lot. They're spoon fed the standard materials and led to believe they're all special people, sent off to change the world with their new cert. Linux admins, often self-taught, usually succeed by keeping their eyes open to learn things from others and won't spend weeks arguing with you when you're right.
Best hiring decision you can make: pay the extra $10K/year for the "20 foot hole jumper" rather than getting yourself a couple of MCSE "3-foot-hole" types. You'll never regret it.
*scoove*
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:5, Insightful)
Typically if something goes wrong on a unix system, you will be given a usefull error message, that if all else fails you can paste into google and see what comes up.
Contrast with windows, which often gives far less usefull error messages and frequently wont let you do anything else while the error requester is displayed on the screen. You are resorted to trial and error to fix the problem, a very time consuming process.
People complain about the verboseness of unix/linux, but this is a GOOD THING.. even to newbies, if a newbie sees an error he could paste it to someone who knows how to deal with it.. instead of panicking and freaking out.
The windows mentality has resulted in a lot of new linux users who assume the error messages are useless, thus they dont even read them atall.. they paste them to someone (like me) and ask for an explanation, usually i paste the error right back and they go "ohh, now i see"
Even so... (Score:2, Insightful)
Large scaleSmall scale (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Large scaleSmall scale (Score:3, Insightful)
Another great strength of linux is (Score:4, Interesting)
Its still a bit rough (it could do with support for non gregorian calanders for example) but its proof that linux is for everyone everywhere!
The real merits is not because it is free, but because it gives you a choice and control!
Does the TCO... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does the TCO... (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but it doesnt include the cost of working out the cost of working out to TCO
Linux people are usually Do-It-Yourselfers... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the short-run, this can sometimes hurt a business, because the DIY crowd often like to build it themselves rather than buy it. But in the long-term (and with proper management), having a crowd of DIY people will save you a bundle. While the windows support staff are stuck trying to install MS-Word, the linux folks are fixing router problems, patching security holes and tuning your intranets.
How man more servers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How man more servers? (Score:4, Interesting)
So yes, it IS reasonable that somebody can maintain 1000+ servers, depending on what they are doing. The key is CONSISTANCY. If all servers are one-offs installed by hundreds of people all in different ways things can be difficult, that's why we have standards.
Re:How man more servers? LOOK AGAIN (Score:2)
Re:How man more servers? (Score:2)
Stability means less work for sysadmins (Score:4, Insightful)
I have had that server running for over 5 months now, and I haven't needed to physically visit the server in 4 months. That was because of a power outage; not even Linux is more powerful than God
The point I'm trying to make here is that this nonprofit has no IT department, no sysadmins. They are mainly 50 year old ladies who are smart enough to not ask what the difference between RAM and hard drives. They have a low cost webserver running, which is freeloading on a broadband connection they already have. They don't touch the server, which lies in the corner of an empty supply closet.
Re:Stability means less work for sysadmins (Score:3, Insightful)
I have used windows boxes in the past, but Linux just seems to work better. I can use Samba for my Windows boxes, and I use NFS for other *NIXes. But the fact of the matter is Windows just doesn't like not having a video card, or a keyboard. It doesn't always come up after a power outage. And you can't remotely administer them nearly as easily as you can with Linux.
Like I said at the start, I find this is perfectly correct. I have forgotten about my little server for WEEKS on end, it's just that transparent for me.
Good news?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now answer the question, "Aren't you happy to hear Linux is now cheaper?"
Re:Good news?! (Score:2)
the actual article. the study was over 3 yr.
before the current economic slump.
nowhere does it mention anything due to
a slump.
nice troll!
That was not a troll. (I have a bad feeling YOUR post is a troll but I'll bite anyway since you bring up a good observation.)
The OP had a valid point. Labor costs are a higher percentage of the TOC for Linux as opposed to Windows, so when labor is cheap as it is now, Linux becomes cheap. You have a valid point too. You're saying the study may have determined that Linux is cheaper by looking at a period of time where labor costs are high. Taken together, these two points would indicate that nowadays Linux is even cheaper than is suggested by this study.
Apples vs Oranges (Score:5, Interesting)
I like your POV, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention books, travel to conferences, meetings to obtain buy-in, aspirin, caffine and therapy.
Re:Apples vs Oranges (Score:2)
Re:Apples vs Oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
But you don't own the ideas that the book conveys. Someone else has copyright over it. You cannot republish it, claim it as your own work, or write a sequel using the characters from the book (parodies excluded).
As a previous poster pointed out, there are also things you cannot do with it because the acts themselves are illegal.
When you download Linux, you own the software. You own the source. What you do not own is the copyright. If you accept the GPL, the copyright holder authorizes you to distribute the source under those terms. If you reject the GPL, you have the sort of rights that the owner of a book has.
If this is counterintuitive, it's only because Linux is distributed in a format that makes redistribution easy, while a book is not.
Re:Apples vs Oranges (Score:2)
Re:Apples vs Oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
I've said this before.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've said this before but, while the above statement is frequently bandied about, I do not see evidence of this in the real world. Indeed the majority of job postings that I see for Linux sysadmins offer salaries that are a fair bit less than similar positions looking for MCSEs.
Indeed, there are also several commonly used salary surveys on the net that seem to indicate that Linux sysadmins are paid less than their Windows counterparts. I've even seen a few stupid cases where positions requiring Linux experence and an MCSE certification actually paid less than similar positions requiring an MCSE only.
Is this only the case in my region or is it the case on a wider scale?
thank google for the low TCO (Score:2, Insightful)
*ahem* there ARE windows admins that are capable (Score:3, Insightful)
Where it saves money (Score:2, Insightful)
ok, that's great, but... (Score:2)
certainly there are more applications, etc, available to run on microsoft platforms then on *nix platforms...and since there are many more options for the microsoft platforms, it's easier to find one with all the options you want...how do you quantify this difference...
also, while i know some businesses have switched and do use *nix platforms, i'm willing to bet the vast majority of companies (especially non-hi-tech companies that still use computers) are microsoft users...therefore, the unofficial standard for most things is gonna be microsfot's format...unfair, i agree, but the truth more often then not...that's why everyone uses
obviously there are *nix alternatives to most of those windows things, but again, they're usually not as robust (er, i mean not as many features, because they're generally more robust in terms of not crashing)...
in any case, they may be cheaper in an overall "cost to administor" sense, but overall there are unquantifiable things that need to be considered...
note: obviously i'm a microsoft user, although i do have experience at past companies (and college) using both Unix & Linux...so, don't slam me saying i have *no* idea about them...i admit i'm no expert, but still...
Article is bullshit (Score:2)
Robinson compared Red Hat Linux 7.3 running Apache to Solaris running Apache, and to Windows running IIS. The comparison was all on x86 architecture, using a relatively small sample of 14 companies running mission-critical Web servers. The study found that Windows needed an average of 7.6 servers for a processing unit, Linux needed 7.4, and Solaris needed 2.2.
My Windows boxes require 0.5 servers for a "processing unit". This article is bullshit. Normally, I wouldn't take into account anecodtal evidence, but their results are so completely out of whack, I just have to call bullshit. Being off a bit is one thing, but being off by a multiple of 15 is another.
Clarifications Needed (Score:2)
I think what needs to be clarified (which the article does not explain) is what a "processing unit" really is. Is it 100,000 static (non-changing) pages, 100,000 fully database-driven dynamic pages where each page needs a dozen SQL queries, or somewhere in-between? Let's not even start counting how many images a page may or may not have, their sizes, etc.
Ideally, the study itself has that information. But all we have here is a derived article lacking it.
TCO is always a murky thing to calculate. While it is obviously desirable to purchase something that costs less, errors always seem to sneak into TCO calculations that make them meaningless.
Same w/Macintosh (Score:4, Interesting)
Point 3 is most important (Score:4, Insightful)
And that is the problem with Windows. By the time i had gotten most of my servers to NT4, they were shoving Win2k down my throat. After i had gotten everyone onto Windows NT 4.0 workstation, i couldn't get it any more - i was forced to have W2k and NT4 Wkstn running side by side.
Windows, unless you just refuse to be able to run certain software, requires you to change everything every 2 years. Its a nightmare.
Mac OS X and FreeBSD wouldn't have required me to change so much stuff over the last two, years, and i don't see a big deal with the next few either.. while windows admins will HAVE to incorporate XP into the networks, because they will have no choice.
AHA! (Score:4, Insightful)
This study is stupid. As a rule, there are more windows admins than anything else, because that is what the market demands. As a result, there are more $30-40k deserving windows admins who would get their hands full with a lot of boxes. Still, if you need admins for a 100,000 hit a day web site (which doesn't sound all that high to me), you need to hire people who can roll out identical, customized machines in short time, have experience monitoring, and can batch updates, etc. You can hire a bunch of cheaper admins, who will install hotfixes one at a time, rebooting each time, or you can hire one or two good admins who can qchain em together, and reboot when all are installed. TCO is as much a function of management and hr's hiring skill as it is or anything else.
ostiguy
Re:AHA! (Score:3, Informative)
Wow. You're talking about a lot of admins. I handle the functions of systems administrator and network engineer alone for a site that does 2,500,000+ hits per day. If I had to do it with Windows, I'd be swamped. Because I choose reliable hardware and Linux, it doesn't take a lot of time at all.
steve
Re:AHA! (Score:2)
Huh? Maybe something magical happens around 100,000 hits. Our webserver does 50,000+ dynamic pages per day. It's just one server (Win2k). Doesn't need much maintenance.
I'm glad you don't work for me (Score:2)
Experience counts for a lot in a sysadmin, whatever the OS.
Empire-building (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that's not a healthy corporate culture. But in big companies and semi-states (a mainly european phenomenon where state-owned companies kinda-sorta privatise), it is a common one.
More (Score:2)
Besides... You actually paid for Windows?
Ignore TCO, go for flexibility and freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
"Always in motion is the future" said Yoda. Decisions need to be "future-proofed". That needs flexibility. If you have room to manouver then you can react to the unexpected. Open source gives you that room to manouver.
Paul.
Watch the money (Score:2)
"It depends" seems to mean "It depends on who's sponsoring the study."
Money Isn't The Object (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not saying that money isn't a factor at all. Sure it is. But if money was the main factor in the decision for a company, and I were a stockholder in that company, I would be very concerned. If they were switching from Windows to *nix based on cost, I would have to wonder if their eye was really on the end goal.
In my case I operate a public safety system, a 911 dispatch center. Our radio consoles and recording system all use Windows NT and 2K. We KNOW it would be cheaper to use *nix. We KNOW the system would be more reliable. Our CAD system runs AIX and sets a great example to prove the point. All that doesn't matter one single bit. Why? First off it's propriatary equipment and only runs on Windows so we cant change it. Second we couldn't justify the down time for the change and operator training.
It's not about price or TCO. If that's what starts to drive the *nix community then they will lose big time. Focus on doing a job, doing it well, and making it a pleasure to do the job. That will win customers/users in the end, not price.
This comming from a man know by family and friends as a tightwad.
Re:Money Isn't The Object (Score:3, Insightful)
In my limited experience there isn't with the exception of proprietary software (as in this case). But there might be some other things that Windows is better at (there just must be, I'm sure of it, isn't there?)
"Then it wouldn't actually be cheaper, would it? TCO means total cost of ownership."
Yup. I think quite often people forget that cost is measured in terms other than just dollars.
Telling line of submission (Score:2)
From the submission:
When a study is done that says Windows has a lower TCO, it's bashed as being obviously flawed because of this very attitude. We just know that Linux MUST be cheaper. But when a study is done that shows the opposite is true, it's hailed has obvious.
It's all lies! (Score:2)
tco is irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)
our district is a novell network. i have heard novell is a pretty good choice, but apparently, they screwed the pooch pretty badly. our win98 clients run dog slow, and need tons of maintenance. we have many problems, alot that just linger. so what do they do, hire technicians for every school. but guess what, ditrict level tech dept. gets bigger budget, tech admin has more stroke. you think he cares? no. he has no concern for costs. we have literally hundreds of old P120/32MB boxes, many purchased just to qualify for technology funds from the state. (don't get me started on that one!!)
i proposed turning some into X clients. hell, all the kids do is access internet type a paper or two. maybe put together a powerpoint show ( i teach 7th grade). of course the boxes go totally unused. in fact, 20 take up an entire lab. a complete f***in waste. i spoke to the district tech admin, showed him all that it can do, running X remotely from my classroom no less. he was shocked all i needed was $3K for a dual xeon server. he said no, primarily because he wouldn't control it. we would spend school funds, and we'd run it.
remember, that tco doesn't matter if you're not spending your money, and you have to spend it all.
Re:tco is irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
first, i don't need you to tell me what my job is. i teach history and technology, and have been developing/sysadmining for several years, both windows and linux. i would suggest however, you get off your high horse and grab a whiff of your shit. it stinks, just like the rest of ours'. if you knew one thing about education, you'd realize that teachers do a helluva lot more, and need to, than just "teach". and for your edification, i am not a "teacher trying to be a technician". believe it or not, i actually know wtf i am doing. and no, dipshit, i'm not "experimenting", no more so than the LTSP, or K12LTSP, or Largo, Fl.
second, those machines had nothing to do with e-rate, so stop trying to act like you know something, 'cause you don't. they were old refurbs that we purchased from a reseller because we needed X number of computers per student for digital high school $. that included of course, any piece of crap computer laying around, the office computers, the old 486 we have running our voice mail, anything that would boot. and the money was used at our school? nope. at the high schools to turn them into "digital" high schools. money spent to put a computer on every teachers desk to run the new atendance program, shit like that. they knew from the start that those pieces of crap would not, could not be used. they didn't give a crap.
yes, i know it's gonna fail. and you almost have a good point, except that what do you think, people aren't gonan be able to learn how to admin a freakin linux box? you are right about the school techs. they are bottom of the barrel, for the most part. pay is crap, and no chance for movement, since most don't have a degree(no, i don't think that is important).
i'll give you a story. four years ago, we had a "pc" lab. no file server, nothing. students saved work to the desktop. had to always be at the same computer. half the time they lost their work. so in november, i install security software, lock the boxes down, and set up a linux/samba server using an a scrounged up pc and a couple of hard drives. every student had their own logon (simple to get a student list from sasi, write a perl script to automate adding users, config samba, etc.....) and it worked flawlessly, got hammered day after day, and never crashed until may when the district technidiots pulled the plug and f***ed the whole thing up. long story there. next week i get a dozen calls in my class where are the files, the printer, etc. i just laughed. it took them three years until we had a solution, and even konw, it still doesn't work right.
anyways, since you don't know me, nor i you, i'll just assume that you are an insecure mcse paper tiger since you talk so well out of your ass about being a technician. as mick foley says, "have a nice day"
agrees with my experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows administration is enormously labor intensive, even if you set up everything the way Microsoft recommends you do. Windows administration (and Windows programming, for that matter) reminds me of the recent thread on games Everquest and the Virtual Skinner Box [nickyee.com]: you get the feeling that Windows tools are structured to dole out rewards to keep you playing, even if your skill level is pretty low. It's no accident that so many dialog boxes say things like "Congratulations, you have just..."; some accomplishment--to stick a CD in the drive and enter a serial number. The goal, after all, is to keep people buying and recommending your product; if it doesn't work effectively for them, that's OK as long as the customers don't notice and feel good about it.
As a result, "certified" Windows sys admins feel really good about what they are doing--they get a sense of accomplishment. But a skilled UNIX or Linux sys admin can often accomplish with a couple of commands in seconds what it takes the Windows admins hours to do.
Unlike Windows, Linux won't try to make you feel good or give you a pleasant user experience. It won't encourage you or compliment you. It's just a professional tool, and at that it's quite effective. What it will let you do is, given the same workload, spend more time on the beach (or posting on Slashdot, as the case may be :-).
All these studies... (Score:3, Insightful)
For example:
If for instance if your deploying any machines with Windows 2000 Server/Professional now, then you will only have two years and three months of mainstream support. What happens if there's a critical exploit discovered (or released) one week after that ? Tough, you should have upgraded your OS by now.
Or how about if you developed and deployed an online conferencing systems with Windows Media encoder 7.1 just a year ago ? Well unless you want to be using unsupported software, your going to have to upgrade the software you developed to Windows Media Encoder 9 before the end of this year.
And even if it's acceptable to your company to run unsupported software, it's going to become harder and harder to find legitimater copies of the software you need. For example Office 97 would suffice for my word processing needs, but Microsoft have stopped selling it, and most of the copies on sale now are illegitimate. How much would a Microsoft inspection cost your company ?
Btw support lifetimes here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh
Not ONLY because it is free (Score:3, Insightful)
TCO ? Windows doesnt have one.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, it's kind of true. (Score:3)
Windows can be scripted to an extent, while less malleable than Linux, you can still automate a lot of tasks. Is Jonny MCSE gonna do this? No. Neither is some dork who bought a book and got an RHCE.
In the right environment, either system is easily managed and scripted (and even stable). But the number of "Windows Admins" drives down the price of us, therefore we have more men per machine.
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
C'mon, folks. It's simple:
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:2)
Hardly pointless. Replace Lightwave with.. oh.. any game ever made and suddenly a chord is struck with everybody who has a PC at home.
Be serious. People use their PC's to perform certain tasks. Windows has the best variety of mission critical apps out there. Linux has alternatives, but they're not always sufficient today.
It's great making your computer boot, but that's not what you bought it for.
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for "tasks", I've found that my mother can make much better use of Redhat Linux 8.0 than she can of WinXP. Supporting it for her is easier as well--"Hi mom, turned SSH on for me? Great--remember that green piece of paper with instructions on how to give me your IP?" For her limited word processing needs (She writes a weekly article for a local newspaper), there's Abiword and openoffice. For email there's Kmail or Evolution, or any other number of excellent email applications. There's free solitaire games that she loves, etc. Windows--to get the same functionality for this woman--I'd have to pay quite a bit more. I'd have to purchase Microsoft Word and pay for a LOT of features that she can't use, Outlook--again the same, and download a number of buggy shareware games that would likely cause issues for her down the line.
It's not the "casual home user" that is tied to Windows. It's the office user whose environment requires MS-Office ONLY features that have not yet been implemented in the OSS solutions available on Linux. It's the user that has specific requirements as far as software, which in turn has specific requirements in therms of OS.
For the casual home user, or even for the middle-of-the-line home user, Linux is *wonderful*. For the advanced user? More of the same.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:2, Interesting)
As for Remote Help/desktop, I refuse to leave those turned on, as I see them as a major security hazard when combined with a number of other "features" of Windows. Teaching my mother to turn them on and off or implimenting a similar method as the one I use for her to turn SSH on and off for me is a possibility, but one I don't really wish to look into because Windows boxes are very hard to lock down to a point where I'd feel secure putting a clueless 50-something year old women on with a always-up DSL line. Security concerns combined with the necessity to upgrade her to WinXP Pro (to prevent her from damaging her system with cluelessness), install Norton Antivirus ($40 or therebouts) and deal with various other Windows concerns... It's just not worth it for a system that she won't use. Particularly when you consider that Windows needs to be cleaned up and disinfected every year or so.
As for Outlook Express. Ugh. I used it once for a while, and disliked it quite intensely. If I was going to put her on any free email client, it would be Mozilla. She's quite happy with Evolution, however, and I'll leave it at that.
Linux is well within her budget, and it gives her a lot of confidence--she can't do anything wrong, outside of dropping the computer on the floor--so it helps her overcome some of her computer fears.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you cannot run Lightwave on anything other than Windows, then Windows has the lowest TCO for that application. I get that. My advice still stands: Read the articles before posting. It's hard to hold a useful discussion when clueless folk who see "TCO" in the posting, and decide they already know both what the story will say and what their opinion is.
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, we were talking about costs in businesses here, so availability of games is hardly an issue, since the number one games played in offices (minesweeper, solitaire and freecell) come with any standard Linux install...
But seriously:
Windows has the best variety of mission critical apps out there
This is a nice broad statement, but it very much depends on what your mission is, wouldn't you agree? If you're for example in the business of developing Java-based software, Linux workstations are most certainly a nice cheap alternative. If your mission is education, the same thing may apply.
And please don't give me the "it will take ages to convert the users" story... as long as the sysadmins know what they are doing, anybody familiar with Windows can learn KDE in an afternoon... it took my girlfriend about an hour...
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:2)
Summary Ley you can under wine with success... and they are porting it!
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:5, Interesting)
We're months away from having the screamernet version (i.e. render only, you still need a Windows machine to set up the animation/modelling etc) and probably at least a year or two away from a Linux version.
Which is fine. If Linux is a good OS that'll run Lightwave a year or two from now then I'll be happy to evaluate it.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying Linux is worthless, I'm saying that this zealousy over it won't solve anybody's problems. As a matter of fact, it'll probably cause problems. Most of my company frequents Slashdot. Let's say they were taken in by the hype and adopted Linux. Guess what? Expectations are high, which means that every little problem will be blown out of proportion. Before you know it, everybody's anti-Linux.
We're already having that happen today. Some of the engineers have been moved to Linux, and they're fussing over every idiotic problem that Windows just doesn't have. The worst part is having to look up badly spelt commands in order to figure out what to do. They're having to make compromises in order to get through their day.
If this happens on a grand scale, then what? You get the bigwigs around companies everywhere saying "What a nightmare. I'll stick with the company that understands our needs best."
Slashdot'd be smart to pull back on these worthless debates. Raise the bar too high and Linux'll never be accepted.
You're company is probably screwed regardless. (Score:5, Insightful)
If your company tried Linux on the basis of hype, it probably means they initially got hooked on MS hype too. I doubt either decision was made objectively or wisely. Did it occur to your Slashbot bosses that maybe they should have only tried Linux out on a few machines first? That way it needn't have caused any significant pain. Also, a newly deployed Windows system isn't that hot either. You're co-workers are comparing something that's probably had months or years of bug-fixes, tweaking, and workarounds to something they just adopted. NEWSFLASH! Everything sucks just in different ways. Like any tool, Linux can do the job wonderfully once it is learned. Of course, you'll mash your thumb a few times on the way. Here's another newsflash: You've had years to forget how much it hurt when you first started using it. Don't bs me otherwise. I cut my PC teeth on 3.1 and have cursed at every version up to and including XP.
Linux doesn't sound like a problem here. Quit believing hype and maybe you'll have better new product experiences.
Incidentally, Slashdot is not a monolith. We have 15 year old young minds who think every piece of OSS software is GPLed and anyone who makes money with it is a thief as well as 15 year old Young Republicans who think OSS is communism. I'm sure others can think of even more savory types who hang out here. Remember, the IQ of a mob equals the intelligence of it's stupidest member divided by the size of the mob. It's pretty useless to give it advice.
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
Any company that moves to a new platform just because of hype is looking for a major disappointment, because NO platform today can live up to the hype of its supporters. First-time Windows users will find the Luna interface to be scary, certain things to be counter-intuitive, etc. First time Mac users will pull out their hair over certain permission-schemes, their eyes will ache from the animation and oversaturated bright colors and whites, etc. First time Linux users will type in "dir" and be totally confused as to why it doesn't behave like DOS.
After a while, any of these complaints go away--and the view of the OS becomes more practical. "Does it do what I need it to do?" "Does it work the way I need it to work?" "I know it's not the BEST in every area, but is it the BEST in the areas I require excellence in the most?"
Hype is a good thing and a bad thing. It gets the ball rolling, but it also encourages disappointment in those who absorb hype as 100% truths. Those who don't accept hype as an absolute truth, however, still exist--and they come over with realistic expectations and find many exciting things that exist on their new platform that they could only imagine on their old one.
A smart man will be a smart man, and a foolish one will be a foolish one. Guess which one will be disappointed. And guess which one the Linux community doesn't really want in the first place, no matter HOW nice it would be to have championed the Number-One OS of the future.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
As the article said, Linux keeps costs down as far as staffing goes. Instead of having 4 people on staff for Windows, 4 people for Mac, and 4 for Linux, you can pretty much fire the Mac and Windows admins, because Linux admins tend to be multiple-platform aware, so you get more for your money--even if you have to pay them more.
In addition to that, Linux is the most open and accessable platform. If something needs to be done on that platform, it pretty much can be done for free or implemented using an OSS solution, whereas with Windows you'll be required to either develop the resources in-house or purchase additional software/development services.
Yes, it's still a choice which one you want to run. But unlike Windows, it doesn't cost you anything to throw a copy of Linux onto your machine and dual-boot. There's no reason why you can't have a copy of Linux on the workstation of every person who might use it--you might even find that the copies of Windows go unused as Linux has come a LONG way in the past couple of years in terms of usability, compatibility, etc. You don't need to be a geek anymore--Windows often requires far more geekiness than Linux.
-Sara
Re:Price is not everything... (Score:2)
So, Linux already has its foot in the door.
Here's what NewTek says:
***"Many larger LightWave® facilities already have substantial Linux rendering resources, and they are eager to add this power to their LightWave® rendering arsenal," said Arnie Cachelin, NewTek's 3D development manager. Cachelin went on to say, "There are also facilities that require Linux rendering to consider using a package in their pipeline. Adding a Linux render engine to our Windows and Mac engines is just one more way we meet the needs of our customer." Cachelin concluded, "In the current economy, studios are increasingly cost conscious, so the opportunity to get an affordable state-of-the-art renderer into their pipelines is very appealing."
***
And if you yearn for new versions of your favorite Amiga raytracers, then Real 3D [realsoft.com] is available for Linux.
Re:ZDNet is on drugs (Score:3, Informative)
Really? That's funny... 'cause my computer, for some reason, won't shut down properly - I have to just yank the plug. I've done it dozens of times, and guess what - NTFS is just fine, no problems.
Lets not go making stuff up, eh?
Re:But seriously (Score:2, Funny)
This is what /.has become (Score:2, Insightful)
disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this one of the main reasons Windows is such a problem on both the desktop and in the server arena?
Not just the scriptability (Mac OS X goes a long ways in this regard) but the looseness of the implementation, which is the big reason admins stay so busy patching, etc.
Re:disagree (Score:2)
As shown by so many exploits, MS has managed to make it so loose that it is routinely a source of security violations, and thus a burden for admins, as opposed just to being an easy way for them to manage and resources. Loose is good...too loose is bad, and MS/VB is too loose, according to the public record. Go back the last 5 years.
Managing large numbers of servers (Score:4, Interesting)
what it really comes down to is a CLI and a good scripting language. Now windows machines claim to have a scripting language but to use it effectively you have to go through a GUI not a CLI thus network admin of unix machines is not for the faint of heart. This situation gets worse when you start trying to configure services (web servers, etc...) that also have GUI interfaces rather than text configureation scripts.
On the otherhand admin of linux across a net is pretty darn easy. When you start getting into having your main disks not be the local disks life gets even simpler in Linux.
On the otherhand, I suspect that the better a desktop machine becomes the more GUI administration is going to be important on linux. Consequently it may lose some advantages in fleets of desktops.
Re:A significantly larger number of systems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Recall (Score:2)
"We didn't get bad computers....we got lousy Dads!"
Re:You get what you pay for. (Score:2)
While it is true you can buy yourself a Cray for Millions of dollers because it is one of the best systems out there but for most companies they need to get the job done first and do it with minimum cost.
Re:What a joke (Score:2, Informative)
I'll probably get marked as a troll by those linux zealot moderators among us, but oh well.
Not necessarily a troll, but I definitely disagree. And your attitude will likely get you troll status no matter how true or false your argument is. Anyways...
This "study" is preposterous. While Linux has a lower TCO in small lab or workgroup environments it is highly unsuited for real enterprise environments.
I think it would be the other way around. Small environments don't have the manpower for setup, but enterprise environments usually have to custom-build solutions no matter what they start with, be it Windows or Linux.
While Linux has many of the same feature analogs that Windows 2000 does, the Linux ones are usually incomplete or far inferior to their Microsoft counterparts and require a significant amount of time to install (In order to install software X I have to recompile these libraries too?!? But software Y relies on them, oh? I have to recompile that also?), maintain, and upgrade.
If this is your impression of linux, then you must be doing it wrong. You almost never need to hand-compile stuff nowadays. Most distributions not only have most of the stuff you need out of the box readily available, but have sane upgrade systems as well.
- A Distributed Directory Service. OpenLDAP with SSL? PLEASE! Active Directory works well, right out of the box.
And where exactly is your argument as to why LDAP doesn't work?
- Client Policy Management. Uh, I can install Samba and hack away to get ntconfig.pol to work, which is a seriously out of date policy scheme from the NT/9x days, or Active Directory.
I'm really not sure what you're saying here.
- Remote Software Installation? In Linux, whichever hack you choose, it's going to require a lot of administrator time. With Windows 2000, you've got the package installation via GPO's. Easy to setup, and you can automaticaly configure clients with software packages based on the organizational unit (eg. Lab 1 in building 4) they're in.
apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade
- Centralized Management Tools. There are a few crappy third party tools for Linux, but they suck, to be frank. With Windows 2000, you have the MMC tool. Heavily upgraded since the NT4 days, this tool allows you to generate custom toolsets to administer your entire organization from one window, if you choose. Just add a snap-in and go.
There's a number of centralized management tools that get the job done, although I agree they're not as pretty as some of the Windows stuff. They're not unusable though.
- Remote Administration. Linux? X11 or VNC. Windows? The excellet Remote Desktop/Terminal Services software. Much more stable, smoother (movies & sound via RDP anyone?), and not clunky.
Maybe you can argue clunky, but unstable? X11 and VNC are perfectly stable.
- Kerberos, with no dicking around, nuff said.
Yeah, kerberos is still a bit of a pain, but much improved in recent distros.
- Enterprise monitoring utilities. With Linux, you have things like BB and syslog, yippee. With Windows 2000, you have BB, but also excellent tools like Microsoft Operations Manager, and the numerous other network monitoring tools (like the cool ones from Solar Winds).
OpenNMS [opennms.org]. 'Nuff said.
- Automatic Updates & Patching. I think Red Hat still has that crappy update utility, sucks if you've gotta update 50 servers that way, though. Microsoft? Software Update Services and Automatic Updates right now. Not the perfect solution, but much better than what Linux has going for it.
sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
With an even moderately competent Win2k administrator a network can be almost completely managed from his desktop.
Wasn't the whole point that a moderately competent Linux administrator managed more servers well than a moderately competent Win2k administrator? It's not like they made it up, they did a survey.
One can even argue that, with a competent administrator for each, Windows 2000 can be made more secure (while still being perfectly usable). I won't even get into the whole debate about the number of Linux exploits compared to the fewer Windows 2000 exploits on Bugtraq, because that really doesn't mean much overall.
Yeah, a good administrator can secure either OS reasonably well.
When it comes to pure software price, sure Linux is cheaper. When it comes to the enterprise? Please! Linux can't compete, right now. Microsoft software appears expensive (and most certainly is overpriced), but when you figure in man hours installing, updating, and maintaining, salaries for those people, and downtime while you recompile app x and lib y and app z that depends on y, Windows 2000 starts to look very attractive.
I think the whole point was that even counting all those things you're mentioning, Linux came out cheaper. You can always make an argument either way, but the point is, they went to real companies and asked them about their costs.
Re:What a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
Whereas you indeed made several good points, there are some in which certain amendments might be in place.
Remote Administration. Linux? X11 or VNC.
Who in their right minds would ever do *nix remote administration on graphic UI? In an environment like this, you have a separate test box with which you figure out and test all the things that need to be done. (Nobody rolls, neither in nor out, any modifications without first testing them.) Then you write a shell-script to accomplish this and put it up on a network-shared resource. As an admin, you have access to uid(0) account (possibly other than root) on every box. In a simple command, you cycle through all *nix boxes and set the box to execute the shellscript on a given time. You only give the authentication passphrase to your admin key once, and ssh-agent authenticates you to every box without further intervention. All *nix boxes upgrade to new, tested setups automatically at specified time. How do you accomplish this in a w32 network? And who would even need movies and/or multimedia for remote administration duties?
Automatic Updates & Patching.
I know personally people who maintain large corporate and university networks. They have a "local master" server that they use to mirror the updates. Once the updated packages are set on this box, all the client boxes are, again with short shellscripts or with automatic and timed events, set to fetch these packages and update to proper versions. Again, in an environment like you describe, no sane admin would ever allow machines to upgrade to untested versions. Automatic updates, directly from vendor's site would be a Really Bad Idea.
And by the way, the only linux distribution that requires constant recompiling, is gentoo. But that is not meant for enterprise desktops but for individual power users' home boxes. There really are things like dependency-tracking and binary packages for linux. (Debian and apt-get spring first to mind...) I would suggest you do your homework a little better.
The primary goal is not to individually administer all of the boxes, but set up batch jobs that do all the magic. Remote GUI may be nice when playing helpdesk but for real large-scale administration one should not even think about doing repetitive tasks over a remote display.
For the record, I find the study hazy and preposterous as well. It provides no solid figures, only some executive summary numbers. However, I hereby tip my hat to you. You made a worthy post with several VERY good points and aspects people either overlook or forget.
Re:What a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
OpenLDAP with SSL works fine in my experience, never had a headache from setup to implementation. Active Directory does indeed work out of the box. But when third party tools need to interact with it or you need some schema changes, things can go to hell in a handbasket quickly.
Your argument about client policy management is referring to Windows client policy management. I will give that Windows is superior to Linux at distributing policies to clients, but we are talking about Linux across the board. You have a lot more power across the board when you don't have to rely on samba to accomplish things. Also, with NT4 clients (which is often unavoidable in Windows networks on a budget), Samba actually offers a bit more power and flexibilty when dealing with those 'legacy' clients.
Remote software installation better on Windows? You have got to be kidding. Some applications do work fine for doing convenient remote applications. Sometimes Terminal Services is required. I have seen apps that will only successfully install from the console (or, by extension VNC).
I'll admit the MMC is a decent remote administration tool, but I would not give it as much credit to say it is good at managing multiple systems at once. I haven't really seen anything under windows that is any better than anything under linux as far as managing groups of computers at once.
Remote administration under Windows is much more of a pain than any *nix. Almost anything can be done through ssh and the system doesn't care. For gui, all X11 windows are created equal, whether local or remote. X11 is a bit talky in terms of bandwidth, but it is rarely needed. Windows administration first off requires GUI to be forwarded. Second off, Remote Desktop frequently behaves differently from the console, making VNC a requisite practically for those apps that break in RDP world. Why the hell VNC would be needed for much in Linux is beyond me. I rarely have to use X11 even.
And to say Windows 2000 is kerberos with no dicking around is a travesty. Have you ever tried to use the built-in facilities for anything other than Windows clients, or try to get Windows clients to authenticate against an alternative LDAP/Kerberos implementation? They bastardized kerberos just enough to make it desirable to be an all-ms shop. That is their business, making non-ms interoperating with MS too clunky to try. For an all Windows network it is fine, but in that case it might as well be something proprietary, so kerberos is just a buzz word hinting at interoperability that just isn't there.
You seem to have been comparing built in facilities to third party applications when oit comes to Enterprise monitoring. I haven't really bothered to try many third party products when it comes to this area, and I'm not sure what *exactly* you mean by enterprise monitoring specifically, so I'll leave this alone.
And finally, with regards to automatic updating. No sane administrator trying to maintain a consistant environment blindly runs auto-update. One, you test out patches before giving the big ok to mass deployment. For another, Windows updates requires reboots 99% of the time for update package installation. That really makes reliabily sink. If you are really crazy enough to do auto-updates and trust parties outside your organization, you can easily use up2date automatically or apt as a massive cron job.
My final point is that clearly you are a relatively seasoned Windows administrator. I have been in that role too. Both times they let me go in favor of a cheaper administration who was 'good enough'. These replacements often have no idea how to fully exploit the features available in Windows. When talking with them, they never know that AD is an LDAP system, or even what Kerberos is. The only thing they ever do is vnc (yes *vnc in*) to the domain controller to modify user accounts not realizing the power of mmc to make it easier. That is the extent to which they interact with AD. These are the people who cannot by themselves efficiently manage larger networks.
And it is becoming increasingly hard for businesses to tell the good from the bad. The market is so saturated of people who were pretty decent and jumped at the 'get your MCSE with us' commercials, that finding good administration is hard. Linux scares these people by and large, so the market of Linux administrators is a lot more pure. If and when RHCE becomes 'hot' like mcse, you'll see a lot more junk Linux admins too...
Re: "zillions of Linux desktops." (Score:5, Interesting)
I have just finished deploying twenty old (P133-300) computers in five locations for my current client. They all run Linux off of cds, with no hard drives. To upgrade, I send them a new cd. They never shut them off and haven't had a (software related) problem yet.
Someone else mentioned LTSP+Mosix. All of you Windows noobs should take a serious look at this project, and re-evaluate some of your prejudices about how to configure and administer a network of "desktops". The absurd amount of computing resources that an all-M$ setup requires (1ghz desktops, servers in every physical location, etc..) can be put to much better use just by expanding your OS horizons a little and giving Linux a chance.