Linux To Take Over Microsoft In Enterprises 237
shougyin writes "For years, Linux has enjoyed much of its success as a replacement for Unix. Companies turned to Linux to replace Unix servers, or for new deployments within a Unix-heavy environment. Linux is still king there, but it's starting to encroach on Microsoft as well. Big companies are planning overwhelmingly (76.4%) to add more Linux servers in the next year, and less than half (41.2%) of the companies are planning to add Windows servers in the next year. Even more interesting, nearly half (43.6%) are actively planning to decrease use of Windows servers in the next year."
Wow . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wow . . . (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes, the expression should be "overtake", which is much different than "take over".
Bias much? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The writer expected the first number to be higher, and the second to be lower. What exactly is the problem?
Re:Wow . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Vendor driven certs are worthless, wether they come from microsoft, cisco or redhat... Those vendors goals is not to educate people or even to ensure a high standard, they simply want more people out there promoting their products and having a large number of "qualified" cert holders helps more than a small number of "qualified and competent" cert holders.
ActiveDirectory - the last missing piece (Score:4, Informative)
I know quite a few companies who run 3-4 Windows servers for ActiveDirectory domain controllers and a lot of Linux servers as AD clients.
Once Samba4 is released, these Windows servers could be replaced as well.
Re:ActiveDirectory - the last missing piece (Score:5, Interesting)
Once Samba4 is released, these Windows servers could be replaced as well.
Samba 4 has been in various stages of alpha for the last five years - or is it six?
Personally, I have considered a Samba 4 installation in only one place - a volunteer organisation that simply didn't have the budget for anything else. I'm still sniffing around for a surplus Windows Server license to replace it.
For an alpha release, Samba 4 is remarkably usable. However the time and effort that I have spent installing Samba 4 would have cost this organisation a fair bit more than the cost of a Windows Server 2008 Standard license. I don't see that reducing a huge amount even when Samba 4 is released - there's a lot of configuration involved to get DHCP, DNS and Samba 4 talking to each other properly.
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However the time and effort that I have spent installing Samba 4 would have cost this organisation a fair bit more than the cost of a Windows Server 2008 Standard license
Perhaps. But imagine that you ditch windows servers altogether and save quite a bit from server CALs. Depending on the network size and configuration that could save a significant amount.
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He is ignoring the cost of CAL's. I'm betting his entire shop is out of compliance on CAL's
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Re:ActiveDirectory - the last missing piece (Score:5, Insightful)
Any organization small enough to have trouble funding and domain controller Doesn't need one.
Just because the only tool you know how to use is a hammer doesn't mean every problem is a nail.
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Just shows how effective the MCE program have been. Its basic level is is all about creating sales packages for AD installations.
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Any organization small enough to have trouble funding and domain controller Doesn't need one.
Are you saying that the client/server model does not scale below a certain number of hosts?
I can see where a capital expense for an office of 5 or so people might be a bit severe, but where a domain is still necessary. Say, where there's a reason to have cleanly segregated user permissions/access controls (which Samba3 does not provide easily/without significant knowledge of how to set it up/reoccurring user admin costs).
Re:ActiveDirectory - the last missing piece (Score:4, Interesting)
I've installed Samba4 on a test site. Installation was quite easy, even considering the DNS integration. However, I couldn't manage to set up DHCP with dynamic DNS updates. Though I see that they are adding an embedded DNS server into the Samba4 distribution (as they did with Kerberos and LDAP servers), so it should be much easier in the future.
Also, Microsoft tools for administration are seriously better than anything Samba4 has.
Samba4 for Linux networks (Score:2)
Would you care to comment on whether Samba4 is useful only for replicating MS technologies in the network, or also for use in a pure Linux/POSIX environment (UNIX, Linux, Mac)?
Can you use pure Kerberos (not the MS version), or is that recommended?
And can Linux Terminal Server Project tie into this in some way (serve an appropriate terminal image based on a Samba profile)?
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"Would you care to comment on whether Samba4 is useful only for replicating MS technologies in the network, or also for use in a pure Linux/POSIX environment (UNIX, Linux, Mac)?"
It's certainly useful. I'm using it in almost Linux-only environment.
"Can you use pure Kerberos (not the MS version), or is that recommended?"
Yes. It's possible to use Samba4 as a pure Kerberos server, and it works just fine. In fact, I've first installed OpenLDAP+Kerberos and then migrated everything on this test site to Samba4.
A p
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Thanks for your insight.
I guess Linux is close to solving one of the major pieces of the puzzle (directory services) that has it beat by Windows.
I've always thought that if I ever got together with a few other people to form a company that we'd start out with FOSS right from the beginning and not have any Windows/Word/Excel legacy to worry about.
Send PDFs to clients, not Word or Writer docs.
And paperless, too.
Re:ActiveDirectory - the last missing piece (Score:5, Insightful)
However the time and effort that I have spent installing Samba 4 would have cost this organisation a fair bit more than the cost of a Windows Server 2008 Standard license
Does trhat count the time it took you to get trained in Windows Server 2008, Active Directory and all the other gubbins? IIRC there was a fair learning curve going from domains to AD. (and we'll ignore the cost of the CALs)
This annoys me a little about Linux migrations, people say how much more it costs based on the fact that they already know Windows, then compare that to the time taken to not only implement but also learn the Linux equivalent. Now you've done it once, you should be able to put in another Samba4 system without any fuss, surely?
and you can, of course, supply your config experience to the community - or to your own, ad-laden, blog. Might as well earn a little from getting people to come read what you did.
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This annoys me a little about Linux migrations, people say how much more it costs based on the fact that they already know Windows, then compare that to the time taken to not only implement but also learn the Linux equivalent.
People do that because its the real life situation and *should* be considered - its not like the migration is happening from a blank slate to one or the other, its going from one to the other and thus the advantage of pre-existing experience in the familiar should be considered.
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ah you miss the point slightly - the time it took to gain the experience on Windows needs to be factored in just as much as the time taken to learn the Linux stuff, otherwise you're not being fair in comparing the two.
Anyone who is experienced in using Windows took time to get that, it wasn't free.
They train themselves before they apply (Score:2)
the time it took to gain the experience on Windows needs to be factored in just as much as the time taken to learn the Linux stuff
There is far more local competition among candidates for employment for a Windows sysadmin job than for a Linux one. So if there are people living within 5 mi (8 km) of your office who have already gained this experience and are proudly listing it on their resumes, that cost gets figured into the starting pay that your organization offers. So when switching to a different server operating system, your organization has to either retrain or rehire sysadmins.
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actually that should not be considered. That prior investment in Windows/AD experience is what accountants would call a sunk cost. Its time and money already spent regardless of how you move forward. If it is used as a justification to never change vendors or technology than its denying you opportunities for other cost savings, efficiency, and value.
Unless you can't afford to make the investment in learning something new, already knowing Windows is a bad argument for staying with the platform if it would
Cost of acquiring an employee (Score:2)
If a Windows tech says it'll cost money to train him up and then cost more to install Linux, get a Linux tech and lose the Windows one.
Firing and hiring is not without cost. Consider the cost of reading resumes, interviewing, training the new hire in your business's practices, and unemployment benefit payments for the employee whose position was eliminated.
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My problem isn't so much the learning curve of replacing one with the other - it's the competency of whoever ends up doing it. Whatever the business case, surely the majority of admins are going to be Windows-only: how is that going to succeed? If you have a business case and a good Unix admin, terrific. But I'm guessing that Microsoft isn't so worried about Unix servers taking over the enterprise because they have to get past the Microsoft-trained admin. He's going to raise hell with the CTO if he's forced
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I'm working at a small but growing office. We considered putting a Windows server in the mix, but with the CAL's it's just not in the budget. Once we got samba working there was no incentive to add it later. The registry tweaks for Windows 7 were painful at first, but once you get the process down it wasn't that bad. You do give up some functionality but save a lot of cash.
Microsoft are the ones shooting themselves in the foo
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I don't see that reducing a huge amount even when Samba 4 is released - there's a lot of configuration involved to get DHCP, DNS and Samba 4 talking to each other properly.
It takes less than 20 minutes to half an hour if you've already got DDNS running on the network.
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To a large degree, yes, AD is the missing piece.
Pretty much everything relies upon Active Directory. Unfortunately, the s4 implementation isn't there yet for basic stuff, nevermind being able to use later versions of Exchange (which is, as far as I can tell, one of the only reasons why people are moving to 2k8r2 if they've already got a substantial 2k3 install base).
Pretty much the whole picture seems to be moving towards "linux" in one form or fashion. Popular virtualization technology, aside from the awkw
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What crap is this?
If one group of developers can do it then there's no reason another cannot. Or was just that an excuse for AC mudslinging?
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That's why development of Samba4 took about 6 years. Yet, they have succeeded. They replicated all the closed Microsoft technologies and right now they are finalizing the stack.
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Selfcongratulatory survey (Score:5, Informative)
This survey is not statistically representative by all means. It is done amidst users that already use Linux and done by a Linux advocacy. I am no MSFT fan. I have not had a Windows machine in my house since 1997 (and even that was Win 3.x running under OS2 Warp). However, the reality is not as rosy as this survey would like us to see.
First of all, the majority of Windows users are SMEs and they are Windows _ONLY_. They _WILL_ buy more of the same and that is a definite. A lot of the rest is desktop estate and its essential dependencies - Exchange and their friends. 95% of these will be buying more of the same. There are very few successful desktop migrations to account for anything more than that. Even that will be an underestimate. 99% buying more of the same is more likely.
That leaves "enterprise" backend use which is pretty much what this survey is about. There is a lively migration racket going on there nowdays as most of this runs in the form of Java and friends on top of middleware stacks. Every 1-2 years the latest and greatest backend idea comes along with its migration programme. As a result servers and stacks get chucked out and replaced by others.
There Linux is gaining and the numbers are about right. However that is a very small portion of the market and misrepresenting it for the whole market is to the very best disingenuous. Additionally, it also completely ignores the "Elephant In The Corner of The Room". The merger of Sun and Oracle has created a vertical stack which will once again effectively compete for their place under the sun (pun intended) in the server room. Any stats regarding enterprise migration that assign (Sn)Oracle a negative year on year growth are frankly wishful thinking.
My own statistics say... (Score:2)
62.6% of decision makers in SME's only know about the existence of Windows as a server OS.
83.7% of decision makers would buy anything that is bought by the majority of their peers.
4.23% of decision makers are fed up having to buy extra CALs for their Windows server whenever they hire people, 68.2% don't understand their licensing obligations or how the BSA can raid their premises as a result - and 53.1% wouldn't - frankly my dear - give a damn, even when they would understand the licensing.
97.5% of marketin
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Well if Linux is going to challenge MS for the SME business, some MS style marketing (which is exactly what this survey is) is likely to succeed.
The other thing about looking at big companies, is that saying "this is what big companies do" is a great way to sell to SMEs. This may not be so true in technology businesses where start-ups have glamour, but it is true in most other sectors.
Not necessarily true (Score:2)
I've worked in SME's for the past few years and I've seen a definite, slow, consistent shift away from windows, though not necessarily to Linux. I get many, many requests for Mac computers.
This, I think, is still a win for linux because of how much more close, even though significantly far apart, Mac OS and Linux are.
wake me up.... (Score:4, Interesting)
wake me up when Linux starts taking over Microsoft in Desktops.
I'm happy about it, but not surprised. As the old generation of IT admins go away, newer ones are more flexible and have ways of saving money without MS in the equation. Linux is not the only solution, but one competitive alternative. Different is the Desktop, partially because it is not baked up big companies like the kernel and enterprise tools are. Canonical is an exception, but sadly a more or less lonely one.
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Re:wake me up.... (Score:4, Interesting)
SAP R/3 was always a Three-Tiers-System, so it was "cloudy", before the term was coined. You have your big database server, you have some application servers hooked to the database, and you have clients which in turn connect to the application servers. When you connect to a R/3 system, it is never clear which dialog server you get connected to. That was so in 1995, and it is still so in 2010.
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Do you see cloud at all mentioned in the grandparent post? Why is your imagination so limited?
People who focus "away from the desktop" at some point end up with wanting to run everything but the driver layer in the browser, coming from some kind of all new, all fancy web-based platform. Ie. the "cloud".
Chrome OS, iPhone, and WP7 can all run offline local (web) apps just fine. Full 3D games are now officially running natively inside of Chrome using WebGL (search for Google's Web Store).
Great. We essentially get an operating system on top of an operating system that can run local applications that actually aren't really local but web-based but that can be run offline. Say what?
There is a lot of stuff that can safely and easily be done via a web interface - consumer-grade web mail, re
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Linux could have replaced Windows on the desktop. The reason it didn't, even with various golden opportunities (e.g. the Vista launch debacle) can be chalked up to a historical lack of interest in ma
I'm a Linux fanboy, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought it was very funny to see 41% called "less than half", and 44% called "almost half! :D
Technically correct and true, yes, but I smell bias...
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survey says... (Score:2, Interesting)
I could see both big and small companies reducing their amount of microsoft servers in the future for a couple of reasons.
1) They are joining their BPOS cloud services and therefore have less need for their own in house MS production servers. Large % of big business is joining the cloud.
2) The new server topology for exchange requires whole new separate servers or hyperv virtual servers for edge (either way its a separate server license) in addition to their CAS, hub transport, mailbox servers, etc.
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One of the main reasons is they primarily need central storage and backup, and often get by with using a simple mailbox without the Exchange/Outlook features.
For our own use I've set up one Nagios server for business contracts and one Samba server for use in the unsafe network area (repairing PCs, often infected by malware).
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Looks very promising.
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I'm a little unclear on why Nagios (which AFAIK is a server monitoring app) would have to do specifically with a file server that houses business contracts.
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1) I haven't seen a large amount of companies joining the cloud. Most of Microsoft Online we sell around here are to really small businesses. Problem with putting a large amount of email in the cloud is that means ALL your email traffic is external. Send a 5MB file to 4 other people, 25MB right there. Add 200 people doing that and you can bring down internet with email traffic alone, not to mention if your internet dies your email dies. Only time we sell to larger then 15 is when they are mostly remote.
2) E
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Linux servers can be easily cloned; just like windows servers. If you are in an Enterprise environment chances are you have moved into virtualization.
Having done that you build a couple images of GNU/Linux machines as templates, and then just clone them. Once you have done that you probably can boil it down to a few small changes like hostname, ip address, running net join ads, etc etc. At my last job I could have a new Linux AD member server up in moments ready and waiting for whatever application its g
I am a nonbeliever (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not trust such assessments as much I do not trust assessments which point in the opposite direction. As much as I would like to see OS prevail CS, I do not believe this will happen any time soon or even in the distant future (under the assumption that our economic regime will not change).
Anyway, a major show stopper for small business to convert to Linux-based infrastructures is the SBS from Microsoft. Small companies have as a service infrastructure these SBS servers, which provide a mail directory service, calendars, address books. It provides web based access to these services as well as an Outlook integration. And it comes with share-point, which is also a requirement. And finally it works with all these smartphones, especially Blackberries and iPhones.
Therefore a migration effort has to take into account that the same functionality has to be provided with better QoS. While better QoS ist not the problem, the same functionality is a serious problem. Especially when it comes to more detailed properties.
But even worse, migration cannot be done in an overnight attempt. These always fail and in the end you loose a customer and they switch to MS for the rest of their lives. Therefore you need a soft migration strategy. And this is the key problem here.
While you can provide most features with lets say egroupware (which is not such a good idea, a servlet based approach would be better) you still need IMAP (dovecot), SMTP (postfix) and LDAP to model the mail service. Egroupware can also provide these calendars. But how do you replace Sharepoint? And especially how do you integrate with Sharepoint? While you switch to webdav oder sftp etc. the client's clients will not switch (at the same time). So you still need to integrate both services.
I have not seen any generic strategy for this problem. And honestly there are hundreds of thousands of small companies using SBS. And bigger companies use similar services.And the Blackberry-integration into a replacement infrastructure is very important as all these business guys use it.
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Will they work with Outlook? And the more important thing: Can they work side by side with the old systems?
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Don't know about Alfresco, but KnowledgeTree is only better than sharepoint at plain document management. If you want all the fancy "use it as the platform for simple web apps" stuff, you need to look elsewhere. Most Wiki software I've seen is great for making editable web pages, but lousy at being used as a platform for simple web apps. Closest I've seen to half-decent is TWiki, and it's nothing like as slick as sharepoint. No matter what you may think of it, that slickness sells.
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How come any software from microsoft takes on the shape of a RAD system sooner or later? MS office with VBscripts, RAD. Sharepoint, apparenty a webapp RAD.
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I would say it indicates that what the world needs is a RAD environment that allows you to build both the user interface and most if not all of the business logic using nothing but a GUI.
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Sharepoint ....what exactly is this doing on a small business server ?
Not multisite - And why are clients trying to integrate with a companies sharepoint server...?
It's just providing webservices and acting as a document repository ..... this can be done much better with other systems ..?
Single sign on? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do we have AD like single sign on at least for linux servers? No? How about clients then? No?
Seriously, how do you guys handle root password management for servers? SSH is not the real answer here, IMHO.
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You know, about 30 years ago (1978 to be specific) there was this strange thing called "KERBEROS"... it still works. Single-Sign-On is a non-issue in the UNIX-world. It was solved 30 years ago.
Re:Single sign on? (Score:5, Informative)
Giving things stupid names (Score:2)
You know, about 30 years ago (1978 to be specific) there was this strange thing called "KERBEROS"... it still works. Single-Sign-On is a non-issue in the UNIX-world. It was solved 30 years ago.
Another great argument for thinking a little bit before giving good things stupid names.
Re:Single sign on? (Score:5, Informative)
Apart from the fact that AD was derived from a Unix technology that does exactly what you ask:
Install Likewise Open. That's your client problem solved. My school has trolleys full of Ubuntu netbooks that log onto the wireless network and allow any AD login on any domain they are joined too. It took three commands I think (install the package, name the machine, join the domain). Kids don't even need to know that the netbooks are Linux whereas the rest of the school is almost all Windows. And, yes, I can use the Windows Administrators to do privileged operations by just sticking them in the right groups.
Server is a bit more tricky but if you're keeping homogenous systems (Linux server, Linux clients), single-sign-on on Linux has been around for donkey's years. Server probably needs Samba4 if you want modern-Windows-clients on a Linux-only server.
Next, please describe how to use MS-supplied tools to achieve the same (i.e. log MS clients onto Linux servers, or even Linux clients onto MS servers). It's hardly surprising that nobody really supports joining the competition, so homogenous systems are infinitely easier to support. But your claim as a unit is bollocks. Wanna come see a Linux netbook join an unprepared, untampered-with Windows-only domain run by a Windows-only machine with no Linux help server-side, and support SSO for all its operations (including initial login, printer access, fileshare access, even desktop icons etc.)? A group of 8 year old's here do it every day.
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Actually its pretty damn easy to do what you are asking with kerb5. 1997 called they want you lame Enterprise SSO argument back; which I would point out at the time was bunk too because there was yellow pages back then and it worked fine.
Useless unless *nix replaces Desktop. (Score:3, Insightful)
High redhat costs (Score:2, Interesting)
RedHat support cost is killing the opportunity to increase linux in enterprises... Windows licenses are cheaper!
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How much do windows licenses cost and how much does RedHat charge?
Growing (Score:4, Interesting)
The surprise is in the unreported (but implied) nu (Score:4, Insightful)
As a poll taken by the Linux Foundation based on the answers of two hundred of it's largest members that responded, what I found suprising is that less than half of them plan on increasing their use of Linux - these are the biggest supporters of Linux, and 50%+ ARE NOT PLANNING TO INCREASE THEIR USE OF LINUX!
These are Linux's biggest supporters (they joined the foundation, they replied to the survey, and they are of a certain size) - if half of them aren't increasing use of Linux, to me that is the interesting number. If 50%+ of the largest members of the Oracle Users Group said they were not going to increase use of Oracle DB that would be the story, why is the spin backwards here? Oh yeah, Linux Foundation wrote the press release, slashdot partitas it...
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That last line should say "...Slashdot parroted it."
My iPhone didn't think I meant to write parroted...
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Maybe the biggest Linux supporters have hit 100%. It would be difficult to increase their use much beyond that.
It all depends on how you slice the statistics, Maybe times are tough and they just aren't increasing anything.
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No shop of any real size (take the 500 employee threshold cited in the survey) is 100% linux not all desktops and servers, not even Red Hat I suspect. There are always certain applications that require Windows or Mac.
Also, are these 100% Linux users not planning to expand/grow (more employees)?
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APOLOGIES!
I got my numbers confused, instead of half, it's one-fourth of respondents, not half. I read this before my morning caffeine.
The point is the same, as pointed out here: http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/hands-up-who-likes-me/ [zgp.org] this is the definition of a self-serving survey.
These are current users of Linux, they tend to report bugs and contribute code at amazingly higher proportion than the general linux user population, are members of a Linux user organization AND choose to respond to the survey. No
The statistics given are meaningless (Score:2)
The article itself even admits as much: "Since the organizations surveyed were picked by the Linux Foundation End User Council, there's naturally going to be some happy Linux users in the bunch."
While we're throwing meaningless statistics around, we might as well also toss in a mostly meaningless anecdote. I work in a small satellite R&D office of a medium sized company. Corporate HQ runs big iron (IBM) and Windows servers. The primary server and most of the desktops in our office run Windows, and alway
...and even those who are still planning Microsoft (Score:2)
..are probably running them on big VMWare-based servers which runs Windows under, ummm, Linux.
Anyone who has been in a large corporate data center knows the ugly truth - Microsoft servers still don't like to multitask. The usual response is to install yet another bit of hardware to run the smallest of applications. Bad for the environment, good for Intel and Microsoft.
Hummmm, has anyone tried to sell Linux to corporations because it is good for the environment?
Stable desktop OS (Score:2)
According to PCWorld, the Linux Desktop is dead(?) [pcworld.com]
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Considering that the latest workstation distributions are still plagued by basic install issues (blank screens, etc), it's still not ready. I got a chuckle reading some of the support forums and the responses that were being given to 'newbies' as if they really expected these folks to understand what was being told to them. Although it has advanced by great strides in the last few years, it's still not ready. The basic install should work universally across a wide range of hardware. Seems they are still hav
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Re:News for Nerds: (Score:5, Insightful)
This week, bogus statistics pushing an increasingly boring anti-microsoft zealotry and a pro-"operating system that takes at least one more step than windows to run any popular application or game" agenda.
I agree. Percentages are tossed around without any evidence or explanation as to how these figures were arrived at. Who was surveyed? What industries were they in? Why are they planning to add Linux servers? What function will these servers have? Why aren't they planning on adding Windows servers?
Re:News for Nerds: (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I just switched my home server from Windows to Linux this very week-end. That cannot be a coincidence, right?
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Thanks! That's the point actually.
Who was surveyed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who was surveyed?
from the TFA:
the organizations surveyed were picked by the Linux Foundation End User Council
Next up:
10 out of 10 randomly selected stock brokers want more deregulation of the financial system
10 out of 10 randomly selected Taliban fighters don't trust the USA
Re:News for Nerds: (Score:5, Informative)
Don Marti tears the methodology and the point of the whole survey to pieces: http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/hands-up-who-likes-me/ [zgp.org]
This sort of surveys may have value but used like this they're just embarrassing.
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Re:News for Nerds: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:News for Nerds: (Score:4, Informative)
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i didn't read the entire article nor do i have any insider info like you do but if you take any survey and the report on the findings of said survey does not describe you then obviously you were not what the survey found to be the trend that emerged from the sample group.
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Interesting enough, I was surprised to learn that some rather large institutions run their programs inside cygwin inside windows.... So all they are doing is replacing the windows machine with linux instead of running the java inside of cygwin, which makes perfect sense. As to why they were running the program inside cygwin inside windows to begin with, I have no idea.
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From what I have seen.. the "decrease" in windows installs is because of data center consolidation and closing of offices that had a BDC. Yes more companies are looking at linux solutions for the back office, But it's not the picture they paint.
Windows is losing simply because of scaling. All companies are scaling back and if they reduce the number of servers at satellite locations, those are expensive licenses they will not have to pay.
Granted, I personally think it's retarded as hell to shrink your n
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There are consolidations, but also process validation through the use of Linux appliances, and the ease of licensing, and incredible ease of virtualization. The old days of Microsoft sales guys with the CEO on the golf course doing deals has met the reality of people with low budgets just rying to get a reasonable job done. Add in the posturing, the lawsuits, and being way behind in a market they actually helped to create, and Microsoft's incredible warmth (yeah, I'm being facetious) just doesn't do it any
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Windows is losing simply because of scaling. All companies are scaling back and if they reduce the number of servers at satellite locations, those are expensive licenses they will not have to pay.
You are right, and that's one extra hurdle of using proprietary software. Accounting gets to tell you to lose your BDCs. That makes the software solution inferior, within your budget, to a platform that does not charge you per server.
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This just in, 93.5% of all statistics are made up on the spot!
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> So, in essence, these are companies who already have Linux in place and are merely replacing Windows Servers with Linux Servers. ...you make it sound like this is nothing but Linux Zealot startups when infact pretty much the entire Global 1000 "already have Linux in place".
This is 2010, not 1998. Linux is not some fringe technology anymore.
"companies that already use Linux" covers a LOT of territory.
Slashot should do something with that goofy graphic that Oracle uses that has Tux in a bunch of armor
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And the other 18% are lies.
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Slashdot is a news aggregator. Not a news website. Also if you don't like the website or the comments then it's a simple choice. Leave.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Linux supports rwx/ugo file permissions, as well as ACLs. It really isn't a problem.
The REASON that ACLs really aren't used much is that they are too difficult to audit. The specific problem in your referenced article can be solved with links.
Should have read further (Score:2)
You should have read further. The article summary pointed to another article that showed that the companies they were interested in were large companies and government agencies with $500 million or more a year in revenue and more than 500 employees. As such, their board did select users, in much the same way any pollster or survey creator selects users by setting the parameters or bounds of the sample. Now, as to whether this is valid, well, yes it is valid. It does not appear to be a statistical sample