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Businesses Software Linux

Vista Licensing Speeds Linux Move 257

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the here-comes-the-discount dept.
Stephen Samuel writes "Australia's NSW Office of State Revenue is speeding it's transition to a Linux desktop due in part to a lackluster interest in Microsoft's attempt to lock them into the Software Assurance Program, reports LinuxWorld. The agency's CIO and manager of client services both confirmed they would start scoping for a move to a Linux desktop within six months. Manager Pravash Babhoota seemed satisfied with a Linux move in their back office, citing Linux costs as being just over 1/6 the projected cost of a Windows upgrade, while processing doubled."
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Vista Licensing Speeds Linux Move More

Vista Licensing Speeds Linux Move

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  • I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:01PM (#13694252)
    Ballmer just striped his shorts.

    Microsoft is a company hell-bent on self destruction.
    • Ballmer just striped his shorts.

      Then threw them around a little bit for good measure.
    • Anyone else see the headline and read it as Vista Licensing Speeds Linux Movie ?

  • could these people be on collision course with TC? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu.gmail@com> on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:01PM (#13694255) Journal

    I'm as tickled as the next Linux advocate to see a move to my favorite platform (Unix). But now some warning bells are going off in my head and I wonder if "we" are on a collision course with Vista, and Microsoft's thrust (innuendo intended) into Trusted Computing.

    What are the possible ramifications, and can the Linux community proactively attenutate? I've read many articles, and many posts about Trusted Computing (this has to be one the more ironic names ever, I can almost hear the Microsoft-Intel juggernaut sniggering from here), but I've never felt completely comfortable with how all of the pieces fit together. Maybe it's time for yet another series of replies to re-educate me.

    From past learning I understand TC won't stop Linux from working, and won't stop people from installing and using Linux, nor will it stop entire organizations from converting to Linux. But, what about the "Trusted" relationship to the Microsoft world? An entire organization running Linux would seem open to being completely shut out from a Microsoft shop.

    Are there answers to this? Is a future Linux conversion vulnerable to what amounts to a technical shunning by the Microsoft universe? Not only do I need to know for myself, but for counseling others who are considering Linux.

    • Re:could these people be on collision course with (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:06PM (#13694283) Journal
      Call me sarcastic, but I can see the world not trusting MS systems in the future... if Vista performs as well as IE has, perhaps the divide will be a good thing in the eyes of those who have jumped off the MS ship before it sinks... Maybe that is harsh, but MS does seem to be working hard to make itself irrelevent in ways that will not be fully understood for years...

    • We already know who will win that one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:09PM (#13694297)

      The great thing about governments is that they tend to make the law. Suppose Microsoft's attempts to lock people into their own software start to get in the way of governments using other software they believe to be better, whether in features, reliability, cost, or whatever; it doesn't really matter why. It's a pretty safe bet that the fairly direct result would be legislation making that sort of lock-in explicitly anti-competitive, followed quickly by a nasty lawsuit.

      The one group in any country that Microsoft and their commercial partners can't afford to piss off is the government. Not only are they a major potential source of income in their own right, they are also a powerful ally (witness the DMCA in the US and similar legislation elsewhere). Oh, and they also have the last laugh -- always.

    • Re:could these people be on collision course with (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:12PM (#13694305)
      You assume the public feel compelled to "trust" Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft has become the company that everyone loves to hate. They haven't released a major offering in years, and continue to depend upon new computer purchases as its main source of OS revenue (i.e. highly discounted). Meanwhile, you've got a public tired of the lock-in -- espeically when it serves no purpose other than to extract more of their hard-earned dollars. And I haven't even mentioned the lackluster attempts at beefing up security.

      Meanwhile, Apple seems to be gaining market share -- based on what? A freakin' MP3 player! "Gee", folks wonder, "Are all Apple products this good?"

      And last but not least, there's Microsoft's crown jewel -- Office. Who has $400 to spend on an office suite when Open Office is delivering the same value for FREE?

      Which brings me back to the origainal point --- Microsoft wants us to trust them. What have they done to earn that trust?

      • Re:could these people be on collision course with (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:47PM (#13694464) Homepage
        You assume the public feel compelled to "trust" Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft has become the company that everyone loves to hate.

        Bologna. Nonsense. Most people do not hate Microsoft. Many people that are tech savvy don't like Microsoft, and some of those actually hate Microsoft. But overall, these groups to not constitute "most people".

        • disagree (Score:2, Insightful)

          by zogger ( 617870 )
          Most people I know who still run windows have at least a once a month cussing session when they get hosed, and have to haul their borked windows box to the smiling local MS fixit guy for folding money "repair". Not sure if you would call that angry or anoyed with MS, but put it this way, they are not amused in the slightest. if people don't have a tame geek handy who can be suckered into working for free, running MS just costs people cash and aggravation in between a few minutes of medicore performance and
          • Most people I know who still run windows have at least a once a month cussing session when they get hosed, and have to haul their borked windows box to the smiling local MS fixit guy for folding money "repair".

            I can't call myself a Geek, and lord knows they are thin on the ground here. But I haven't spent a dime on clean-up and repair in ten years of running Windows.

            but once large corporations start changing, and those people go home and run that stuff on their home machines, then they tell their friend

        • It may well be true that everyone doesn't hate Microsoft. However, I think that the GP's point was that there are very few people that actually like Microsoft.

          Regardless of whether any given person hates Microsoft, or merely dislikes them, or doesn't even know that they exist (and think the Windows is "the computer" and IE "the Internet"), you would be rather hard pressed to find a person outside of Redmond that actually feels the warm fuzzies for Microsoft. And, judging from people like Mini-Microsoft [blogspot.com], those people seem to grow fewer even inside Redmond.

      • Meanwhile, Apple seems to be gaining market share -- based on what? A freakin' MP3 player! "Gee", folks wonder, "Are all Apple products this good?

        Really? Where are the statistics? I'm not saying you are wrong, but I would like to see proof.

        Personally I would bet that Apple has gained mind share from the iPod, but that has translated into only marginal market share increases for theirr OS. Why? Because PC's are still really cheap, and people need Microsoft office at home to be compatible with work.

        But I
    • Sure you have the trusted computing iniative, but if corparations and governments start to jump ship based on Vista and Microsoft's attempts to force people into using it, then the end result is going to be demand for computers without TC built in. You'll see this especially if a government agency adopts a position counter to TC. If a company is producing a computer with TC built in and one with out for a government, then they most likely sell it to consumers that want it. If, for example, the IRS goes agai
    • And why should "Trusted Computing" be a problem for NSW? They (presumably) will have their needed applications running on *BSD/Linux, they'll use a standard format for exchanging documents with citizens (or offer several formats). If Microsoft et al is stupid enough to try hindering citicens from reading those documents on Windows, Microsoft will be in trouble.
    • What do you fear? Linux already support Trusted Computing [lwn.net]. Anyone can start using it now [sourceforge.net]! Microsoft is still at least a year behind.
      • What do you fear? Linux already support Trusted Computing. Anyone can start using it now! Microsoft is still at least a year behind.

        What I fear is hardware that requires that in order to be executed, binaries be digitally singed. I fear that the encryption keys needed to sign code such that it may be executed will be licenced and expensive. I fear that MS may try and sidestep the challenge posed by free software by changing the platform so that Linux and other competitor code simply cannot run.

        The TP

        • What I fear is hardware that requires that in order to be executed, binaries be digitally singed. I fear that the encryption keys needed to sign code such that it may be executed will be licenced and expensive. I fear that MS may try and sidestep the challenge posed by free software by changing the platform so that Linux and other competitor code simply cannot run.

          Sounds to me like you just fear the (slim) possibility of having to pay for software...

    • From past learning I understand TC won't stop Linux from working, and won't stop people from installing and using Linux, nor will it stop entire organizations from converting to Linux. But, what about the "Trusted" relationship to the Microsoft world? An entire organization running Linux would seem open to being completely shut out from a Microsoft shop.

      It'll be the other way around. In the past years, we had to convince a lot of people, that it is a bad idea to create documents in a propitary file forma

    • TC = An Ironic Name? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      No, its a 'mareketing phrase'. Its not designed to be accurate, but to appeal to the 'average joe' and make him feel good.
    • I would see this rather as Microsoft shutting itself out from the rest of the world. If interacting with Microsofts products is even harder than today it will force a serious choice, use only Microsoft software or migrate away to something a tad more open. Mind you it doesnt have to be Linux, it can just as well be anything else. The most important thing is what you run in your backoffice. If your backoffice is tied to Microsofts products then your entire organisation is locked too.

      I have a hard time imagin
    • An entire organization running Linux would seem open to being completely shut out from a Microsoft shop.

      Irony in the phrasing aside ("open to being ... shut"), this is bad how?

      Bear in mind, the converse is more likely to be true. Windows will only run "trusted" (by whom?) apps that are signed with a certificate bought from Microsoft, Linux will happily run anything that the user trusts enough to install. Microsoft users will find themselves shut into a jail of their (or rather, Microsoft's) own choosing.
      • But the suits love Billy G. he's microsoft's mealticket. As long as he can keep MS software as the ONLY way to bank, get govt docs, communicate with large corporations, and shut everybody else out, he'll have a steady sorce of income. MS could afford to GIVE the govt their products because if it's required to do business they can charge the middle men anything they want for it!!!
    • Trusted Computing (this has to be one the more ironic names ever,

      No, people are just spelling it wrong. It's really Trussed Computing -- you know, like how you lace up a turkey before putting it into the oven.

  • Nice job MS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:01PM (#13694258)
    Seems like Microsoft has done a wonderful job of convincing customers that buying Vista is pointless. It's bad enough that existing MS operating systems will likely have the same base functionality of Vista with lower hardware requirements(and possibly higher overall performance). Now this?
    • I was thinking the same thing when reading the article. Why does MS do this? It must be because they think they can make more money this way, but they manage to piss a whole lot of people off in the process. I also wonder what the position of the EU is concerning this issue. They are already giving MS a hard time, and if this licensing scheme is introduced here, I'm very curious as to what will happen.
  • In the not too distant "Micro-future"...where a person has to obtain proper M$ licensing from birth...

  • Customer Lock-In (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rob_squared ( 821479 ) <<rob> <at> <rob-squared.com>> on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:02PM (#13694262)
    "Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

    Seriously though, I wonder what Microsoft is thinking sometimes. It's like they're playing chicken against a cement wall with a tank.

  • Sounds sensible to me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:02PM (#13694265) Journal
    Sounds like a reasoned decision, and not a surprising one either. Time will tell what really happens when they switch from XP. I think that if you have your own in-house expertise, the TCO will be lower in whatever OS that knowledgebase is best versed in.

    This group has time to ensure that they are versed in the Linux OS Desktop environment before they switch, so I'm betting that they have a smooth-ish transition.
    • I think that if you have your own in-house expertise, the TCO will be lower in whatever OS that knowledgebase is best versed in
      You can not be serious. Have you ever did a transition from one windows version to another? We are currently working on an 2000/office 2000 to XP/office 2003 transition and it is sheer hell. All the users are freaking out not knowing how to get around, some office documents that opened fine in 2000 have problems in 2003 XP it's self is retarted to hell until you get in and un-ret

  • TCO? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 )
    "As soon as support ends for XP, we will look at moving to Linux [desktops]," Babhoota said, adding the back-end switch to open source had cost 17 percent of what a proprietary upgrade had been costed at, with the agency doubling the amount of business it processed in the same 12-month period.

    Whither now the Yankee group with their magic statistics and Excel sheets which show that in fact Babhoota real TCO is over fives times what it would have been if he'd switched to Server 2003, with a shiny new fade in

    • Re:TCO? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You are just repeating the same Magical Statistics crap, you stupid tool.

    • What they don't study (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lheal ( 86013 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {9991laehl}> on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:56PM (#13694499) Journal

      TCO studies never capture the real costs of either a switch to Linux from Windows or a Windows upgrade. They invariably take the easy route, comparing only OS licensing costs, sysadmin/support salary, and training issues. They aren't "studies" in the academic sense, since the data they study are chosen to achieve a particular outcome.

      In my practical experience as a Linux/Unix sysadmin and MCSE, the things they miss are:

      • Cost of viruses, spyware, and associated "security" software
      • There is a greater labor cost getting Linux to work right on initial implementation. After that, it just works forever, with less frequent patching needed.
      • There is a lower labor cost getting Windows to work right on initial implementation. After that, you have to keep watching it forever. Watching it is more labor-intensive, even with remote admin, etc.
      • Windows applications and utilities tend to cost money, while Linux applications are usually free.
      • There is a labor cost in dealing with proprietary software vendors in the financial decision making. It takes time from the calendar of the business manager as he or she tries to wrangle the best deal from the vendor.
      • There is a labor cost in dealing with proprietary software vendors in ongoing licensing support. It takes time from the calendar of the sysadmin; in my experience it takes as much time to deal with licensing hassles as it does to do the install and configure the application.

      Against all the benefits of not having to hassle with licensing there is a balance, the ability to point the finger of blame at a vendor. With free software, all the blame goes to the internal champion of the software, usually the sysadmin.

      • Which is where companies like IBM, RedHat, Novell and SUN step in..
        You can buy Open Source solutions from these companies, they`re still cheaper than microsoft, still have all the other advantages like low maintenence cost, low risk of viruses etc, but there is a vendor you can blame just like microsoft.
        Ofcourse, you have no real comeback against the vendor, just like you don`t with microsoft... you can simply point the finger. But at least with open source and open standards you can threaten to move to ano
      • Another one: the cost of developing replacement applications in-house (or contracting out) for all those apps your company used to use in Windows.

        Everybody seesm to think that as long as you have a mail program, office suite, and a web browser, you can do you job. That's not the case in a lot of industries. I work in a manufacturing environment, and we have dozens of specialized programs for different jobs. We have one for TPM. We have another for putting together and keeping track of the forms for tr

  • XP Support (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ride Jib ( 879374 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:09PM (#13694296) Journal
    From TFA: '"As soon as support ends for XP, we will look at moving to Linux [desktops]," Babhoota said'

    Babhoota also says in the article that going from NT4 to XP was sensible because they waited long enough that prices dropped, and support increased. I don't see any difference in that case and the one I quoted above. Once XP support terminates, Vista's pricing will have decreased from initial launch, and it's support will obviously increase as well.

    But hey, more migration to Linux makes me smile. 2006, the year of Linux on the desktop!!(??)

    • Re:XP Support (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dodgedodge ( 166122 )
      "2006, the year of Linux on the desktop!!(??)"

      Yeah, just like 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 were, right?

      *yawn*

  • Strange quote from TFA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LodCrappo ( 705968 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:11PM (#13694302)
    "Babhoota said the agency had already successfully bedded down open source on its back-end, running its Oracle 9i and 10g core databases and assorted other transactional applications over Citrix on Dell-based clusters and had guarantees of open source support from key enterprise applications vendors."

    What is open source about Oracle and Citrix? Sure you can run Oracle on an open OS, but that's not really an open solution. And Citrix?? How does that involve open source at all?

    Maybe I am ignorant, but this makes no sense based on what I know about the products they list.

  • Money Savings... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaptainPinko ( 753849 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:13PM (#13694317)
    if oly they'd donate 1% of the savings back to the projects they'd be doing themselves a majour favour and eveyone else too.

  • More of the same (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dodgedodge ( 166122 )
    "Babhoota said the agency had already successfully bedded down open source on its back-end, running its Oracle 9i and 10g core databases" Oracle??? Talk about hypocrisy. How much $$$ would they save getting away from that "proprietary" software? "While the back-end migration consisted of moving off heavier Unix- and Solaris-based operating systems running on Sun hardware..." LOL! So they moved from Unix/Solaris to "open source" and not from Windows to "open source". Oooook.

  • Lower TCO using Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:21PM (#13694348) Homepage
    I spoke with a company about lowering TCO by moving to Citrix or Terminal Services and Linux workstations. The licensing benefits and security at the workstation was one factor, but the big kicker was the workstation OS needs were removed, giving them 1-2 extra years in their replacement rotation and depreciation.


    So, the company agrees and begins to move forward. To my dismay, they put in Citrix, and proceed to replace workstations with Winterms! So, they spent a fortune replacing workstations, instead of just replacing the OS with Linux and featuring new workstations purchased without any OS.


    Management types looked at the skyrocketed costs and went back to the original documentation. They actually tried to blame Linux for the costs. The board report reflected this, even though no Linux was installed. Once this was discovered, to save face, they started buying Linterms (still expensive, still replacing workstation, still with 3 year depreciation and replacement cycle).


    So, I hear of companies complaining about Linux costs and have to take it with a grain of salt because I know that many people have their numbers inflated or do not really realize what they have. For example, a company buys a Linux box running Oracle for a 25-Windows-workstation network. They classify all the workstations and Oracle, the whole kit and kaboodle, as a Linux project. All associated expenses become Linux's fault, even though the Linux costs were low or none.

    • I'm convinced of this. Management at many companies likes to spend money, because to them it feels like an "investment." If they "invest" 200,000 dollars into OS purchases, there is a lot more percieved value than investing 0 dollars into OS purchases.

      The famous economics example is the fur coat markup. A New York boutique got a lucky closeout and tried to pass that on to their customers. So they marked a rack full of fur coats at 400 dollars. Unfortunately none of these sold. So they shifted gears an
    • Winterms are amusing.. They run an embedded version of windows xp, that suffers from many of the same security flaws as the full version... It also comes on 256mb of flash memory, very far removed from a true thin client.

  • Mass. says the same thing about MS Office (Score:3, Informative)

    by P0ldy ( 848358 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:22PM (#13694354)
    TFA:
    the back-end switch to open source had cost 17 percent of what a proprietary upgrade had been costed at

    Similarly the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council on the OpenDocument format mentioned the "cost of a Windows upgrade" if they wanted to upgrade to the next Office version instead of using something that supported an open format. They said that:

    If we were going to go through a migration, my understand of the new Office 12 is that it will not run on Windows 2000, therefore that migration will require a change in desktop operating system, as well as the office application suite itself. We don't know what the pricing of that might be. I've also been told, although I don't have direct experience, that the interface is changing significantly with Office 12. That will obviously create training needs for us within the state. If you compare the operating system upgrading cost--and of course we can only estimate it by prior experience, the upgrade cost for Microsoft Office--we can only estimate that by prior experience, the training intensity--we can only estimate that by prior experience, and probably some necessary hardware upgrades; we believe that an upgrade for us for, to go to that migration, if that were the choice, would be on the order of about 50 million dollars. And we estimate that the cost of going--if we were to go, for example, this is ONLY hypothetical--to OpenOffice, the cost with training and everything else would be on the order of about 5 million dollars. So, there's about a ten-times differential.

    Bold mine. I would like to point out for background info that they said they are running mostly Win2k and Office 2003, and that they wanted to state "vehemently" that they didn't want cost to be made into an issue.

  • Play the Linux Home Game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:23PM (#13694356) Homepage Journal
    Another nice feature of an enterprise Linux install is letting employees take home OS install CDs without even thinking about licensing. Sure, MS relies on piracy to spread Windows across org boundaries, jumping through homes to consolidate the installed base their monopoly leverages into proprietary lockin. But Linux can do that, too, without forcing committment to a vendor or requiring licensing overhead at all.

  • M$ stock holders hate Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rheotaxis ( 528103 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:36PM (#13694416) Homepage
    Most US corporations have executive portfolios with M$ stock, and therefore resist anything that threatens their personal wealth. Unless Linux is less than 1/10 the TCO of Windows, it will take a generation before Windows is gone. Gone it will be, but how soon? I expect to be fighting for open source until the day I die. Governments flip/flop just like all politicians.

  • Now, in a few days, can you foresee... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mr_da3m0n ( 887821 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:37PM (#13694421) Homepage
    another article saying that they aren't really switching to Linux because MS made them a sweet sweet sweet deal? So many stories of big corporations switching to linux ending up being schemes to get licensing deals from MS...
    • The question is did they intend to stick with Microsoft or did Microsoft give them such a sweet deal that they stayed put? In some cases the actual end cost has been that they get paid to keep Microsoft as in the case with the scottish police. Microsoft seems terrified that some big fortune 500 changes to linux and really gets those big savings we expect. Im pretty convinced that a pretty large sum is put aside to be used for stopping those migrations. Even if a defection wont hurt Microsoft stack of money
  • I'd have to say it is the absurd requirements to run the OS alone; not the total lack of features. I mean seriously what are they thinking? People shouldn't need multiple GHz, gigabytes of ram, harddrives the size of buses, and videocards with 128MB of ram just to make the OS pretty. Scaling be damned, its ridiculous.

    IT managers are looking at it like this, $200+ for a new CPU, $120 for a Mobo, $500 for the video card, $200 for the 2GB of ram, and $200 for harddrives just to run an OS that will be out

    • Re:What is Vista's biggest flaw? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Edmund Blackadder ( 559735 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:47PM (#13694462)
      Well, you have discovered the unholy alliance between Microsoft and the computer hardware vendors.

      On one hand the major comp hardware vendors ship only Windows preinstalled with their retail computers (with some small "guaranteed to be failures" exceptions, such as linspire), and do not ship OSless computers for significant savings. On the other hand Microsoft ensures that their software is so bloated that people will require a new computer every couple of years.

      This is, by the way, why the antitrust case against Microsoft fizzled out. In the begining, the big vendors were applying political pressure agains Microsoft, becaus ethey were affraid they were getting too powerful. But then their sales fizzled, so they quickly went on Microsoft's side and started begging them to release some new bloated software.
    • Thats outright stupid.
      Yes, it is. But that isn't enough to keep people from buying it. If it were, MS would not have the market dominance that it already has.

  • Microsoft committing corporate suicide (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:48PM (#13694467)
    I, for one, welcome our new overlord Tux.

    Thank you Microsoft, as you push more and more customers away, hardware manufacturers will be providing more and more support for open-source driver development - unhindered by DRM, even! :)

    I used to be a Microsoft fanatic. Hell, I used to WORK for Microsoft! While I was no stranger to Linux (I ran it back when it was just a floppy-based installation and if you wanted X you had to FTP and compile it yourself) my job obviously required the use of Windows (Duh, working for Satan, you have to use his OS). When I moved on during the dot-com boom thinking that other tech companies' stock options would fare better (STUPID decision on my part. I worked for two dot-coms who tanked) I quit running Linux for a while. It wasn't until Microsoft began to outright attack their own customers (Suing college students for reselling unopened software after Microsoft refused to honor their unconditional 30-day money-back guarantee, suing customers who resell used but retired software license, and hell, even suing customers when they choose competitors' products) that I began to look seriously at Linux again, and when I began testing various distros last year I was shocked awed at how much and how quickly is matured. I use Linux 99.9% of the time now. I only use Windows to pull photos off of my cellphone, and to play an occasional game of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

    I still consider Windows to be an excellent tool for most average users, but I have been moving more toward recommending Linux to non-gamers. OOo has matured, and while its file I/O still sucks, it is usable for 99% of users, and what's more, when they come home to {write term papers/draft business plans/write proposals/edit small flyers} Linux and OOo won't hinder them in the least, and most user-friendly commercial distros of Linux are under $100, and to get the equivalent amount and calibur of software for Windows would be anywhere from $20K on up.

    Microsoft you're shooting yourselves in the foot, and with every suit you file against a customer choosing a competitor's product, you're gaining bad press and driving thousands more away. With every bit you tighten the noose on your licensing scheme, you're driving more and more schools, municipalities, and large corporations away from your product line entirely, from desktops to workstations to servers.

    Keep it up, and you'll go the way of SCO in a few years.
    • Return to castle wolfenstein has a linux client, and if your using an nvidia card it should run about 5% faster than the windows version...
      As for your phone, most cameras i`ve seen come up as standard usb-storage devices and work flawlessly with linux, but not too sure about camera phones.. There is atleast a stack for nokia phones, but you didn`t specify your brand of phone..

  • Government use is a major early win (Score:4, Insightful)

    by puppetluva ( 46903 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @02:51PM (#13694480)
    I get very excited when I read these governmental switching stories. Governments are the only real business users that can effectively mandate file-formats and interoperability standards. Businesses will follow because they must.

    Even in the US, I hear of companies switching whole departments over to OSS on Windows (namely openoffice). These are actually large companies switching over whole departments in regional offices.

    I think that there is a network-effect of these early adopters. If there are enough of them that mandate that you have open-office installed, then (at some point near or just less than ~50%) there will be a sea-change of business that will switch over in one fell swoop. If it turns out that it is a business requirement that you use and have training for open-office, then people will wonder why they are voluntarily paying for Microsoft Office for no good reason. (Legacy docs in MSOffice is not a good enough reason to stay - support for these docs in OpenOffice will be demanded and feverishly worked on if enough enough businesses want it)

    Once the slide starts, it will be a brutal few years for Microsoft Office.

  • A mouse roars (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:21PM (#13694602) Journal
    A huge amount is riding on Vista, not just for Microsoft but all through the IT industry right down to the little guy in China who helps make circuit boards. They all want a piece of what they hope will be frenzied upgrade action and plenty of businesses will suffer badly if they don't get it.

    There will be huge pressure on Microsoft to make Vista work, if necessarily fairly brutally - stick with WinXP and find your security expectations downgraded, monthly updates increasingly scarecrow and difficulties soon arising accessing certain websites or playing certain media, etc, etc. We'll all be told that only Vista can guarantee proper security "for your own good" or whatever.

    It's great to see Linux making inroads, but they are still fairly small and tentative. These guys, after all, are only scoping out Linux, not installing it. Linux still needs some big, influential and well-respected folks to get behind it of the kind Joe Sixpack will admire. Apple has Steve Jobs and the ipod, two items of superb natural showmanship anyone can relate to. What does Linux have? The Eric S. Raymond Opensaucemanship Memorial Lecture is no substitute. Dell will want a bit more excitement before they start shipping Linux boxes en masse.

    • Re:A mouse roars (Score:3, Insightful)

      by arkhan_jg ( 618674 )
      What does Linux have?

      How about the IBM linux TV advert I just saw 30 seconds ago? Or maybe Novell is a big enough name. Linux is not about sexy looking but restricted and easily scratched music players. It's about reliable, big scale software that does the job. I still hesitate to recommend linux on the desktop for your average home user, and I've been using it on mine for 6 years - but government and businesses? Linux makes an awful lot of sense for them.
  • "citing Linux costs as being just over 1/6 the projected cost of a Windows upgrade, while processing doubled."

    Every single Linux move I've read about indicates that costs are WAY less than Microsoft and its shills like Enderle and DiDio claim, and that processing power at LEAST doubles.

    This is on a par with those companies that move from mainframes to commodity servers - they save MILLIONS and processing power is at least TWO TO FOUR times greater.

    Anybody using mainframes for heterogenous processing needs i
    • I work as a sysadmin with about 1000+ real hardware platforms running linux and solaris with a handful of windows boxes. Every 2-3 weeks I have to power cycle a windows box because it has crashed. On the other end I had one unix machine I was told to wipe and upgrade. I wanted to wait 5 more days it had been running for 995 days and I wanted it to hit 1000. That more than anything Linux advocates or Microsoft says convinces me what should be running on my servers.
  • Every time I post a comment, I get THIS horseshit:

    "No discussion or comments found for this request. To create your own discussion, please use journals."

    TRY, please, to get your fucking site working properly.
  • I for one just got tired Windows. As more and more of what I do with my computer is web based and doesn't require Windows, I decided to throw in a new hard drive and install Ubuntu. Now Windows is used for games and a few apps that I need to run from time to time. As alternatives like Linux mature, Microsoft is going to have its hands full keeping customers who want to cut costs and get more out of their computers. Licensing deals that drive customers away are not going to help them in the long run.

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