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Linux: One quarter of the server market by 2003 115

Posted by CmdrTaco from the getting-bigger-by-the-day dept.
weezer writes "LinuxToday has a nice little article about a Dataquest study that claims that Linux will account for about 24% of the server market by 2003. "
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Linux: One quarter of the server market by 2003 More

Linux: One quarter of the server market by 2003

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  • "Linux will continue to grow as an operating system deployed on new server hardware, but much of the hype surrounding Linux will fade once Microsoft ships a service pack for Windows 2000 server," Brown said.

    Didn't I hear this crap a year ago? Something like "hype will fade once Microsoft ships NT 5.0." Am I wrong?
  • The basic concept is to turn the entire hard drive into a searchable database of files instead of a hierarchy of directories. (Oops! I mean "folders".)
  • Well at least the guy didn't take issue with the contents of the post. Must have been a "dis-information" worker from Microsoft that could only find spelling as "non-factual".

    Children like this should have their toys taken away from them. We don't need the "ignorant" to overrun the forums.

    "respect is earned, not commanded"
  • From what I've read, it looks like they went with a hybrid that consists of the old-style NT domains and some aspects of the "regular" directory structure, as known from, say, Novell's NDS:
    you have your regular tree structure with a Root, Organization, Organizational Units and leaf objects, but you also have a Forest, which is supposed to be a collection of separate directory trees that trust each other and are able to synchronize and replicate directory data through some sort of trust relationship....I played with it a bit and then went back to NDS 8, which is infinitely better in every aspect - scalability, stability, ease of use, not to mention maturity (it's been in the works since mid-90's).
    As for LDAP, M$ AD has an LDAP connector, although it is "implemented a bit differently" (read: "embrace and extend").

    If you are into FUD, here's what M$ has to say about their "new" invention in regards to NDS:
    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/server/eval/com parisons/ADandNDScomp.asp

    The rebuttal from Novell can be found here:

    http://www.novell.com/products/nds/nds-rc.html

    Hope this helps.

  • tsk. tsk A slashdot reader so out of date? It was at least a month ago that MS said that the next consumer version of windows would be called millenium and based on 9x code. Notice that NT5 WS is called W2K professional and that there is no W2K consumer. And actually W2K should be a great upgrade of home machines. By then I will have a K7 (hopefully) and I can run all the cool OpenGL and media stuff without having my machine crash every few minutes.
  • I don't think this is accurate at all. A few years ago noone would have predicted that linux would be on the number of servers it is now, so how can this be an more reliable.
  • "c) It is sort of like the old saying, 'it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch.' I have seen how one Linux geek can convert a large number of MS people in the dorms. I have yet to see the opposite happen. "

    Well I was a college student once myself so feel qualified to say this... :)

    The reason is, because college students don't have real work to get done, and as such Linux is cool.

    When I was in college it was the Amiga. After showing my Amiga 500 to various people they all thought it was cool and we had about 5 people on the floor who purchased them.

    That doesn't mean the Amiga was ever practical for doing real work. I had to sell it when I graduated. ;(
  • wow up an whole hour without the /. linux fanatics jumping on his case! Well flames away. Seriously though, I have to agree with you to a certain extent that W2K is better than Unix in some areas. I do however disagree that Solaris has less features than W2K. Plus the fact that the x86 version should not be taken as representative of Solaris in general.
  • First.. plug for a book. Innumeracy. Talks about recognizing statistics that don't make sense.

    Second:
    Lets see 24 percent of the market by revenue, but only 14 percent of the units? That's as if linux would be more expensive. That won't happen. (ie microsoft has 60% of office apps by volume but 90% by revenue, cause everyone else sells for less). Unless they mean total units, and not just for that year... which isn't what they mean. If they actually think that linux will be more costly then other server OS's, they are dead wrong. The only one still selling an expensive server version is turbolinux (I may be wrong, as they aren't selling it yet). Caldera stopped selling the Server Edition (i believe).

    However, the traditional server market numbers are correct 3.4% of revenue w/ 8.1% of shipments.

    Linux will always have %shipments > %revenue (unless other OS vendors start giving their OS away for free).

    Thanks,

    give me a high rating :)
  • Ahh, I wish I hadn't made a student comment earlier, I could have then use my moderator points to bump this AC up to being Insightful.

    It is unfortunately in a way that you speak the truth. The majority of Linux advocates I see are either still in college and have no comprehension of the way IS works, or work for really small companies and have unfortunately not experienced intelligent IS decisions being made.

    I was in college once as well, and also worked for a small company. So cheer up guys, there is hope in this world!

    Well that is unless your only hope is to see a 100% Linux world, in which case better get that Prozac. :(
  • You're using RC1, which __JUST__ shipped, and you're already giving your final opinion on it? Sounds like your company should heavily downplay your opinion on these things.

    Well, it is a RELEASE CANDIDATE. That means Microsoft thinks that this code is probably about ready to SHIP. If this thing's supposed to be ready to go out the door, and it has nearly zero hardware support, I'd certainly have a hard time wanting to use it. (Not that I'd want to use NT/W2k anyway.)

    Rest assured that in a couple of months when Windows 2000 ships there will be robust, high performance drivers for the top 99% or so of hardware.

    Robust. High-performance. Gee, that sounds like *gasp* market-speak! Give it a rest, guy. We all know how robust the current generation of Windows drivers (not to mention the OS itself) is. (In other words, not at all.) And high-performance? Well, sure, in benchmarks. That's all that matters, right? RIGHT?

    In any case I do find your assertion that it doesn't support much of "anything" interesting. Already I am fairly certain the hardware support of Windows 2000 dwarfs Linux or any other operating system.

    You're on Slashdot, and you sound like you haven't used Linux. Hmm. M$ employee? Maybe. However, Linux's hardware support keeps growing. (Gee, I just built a kernel today that supports everything on a Compaq Proliant - we have a new one to play with at work. The hardware support must not be too poor.) Until you've actually used Linux, don't try to make that straight-across comparison - you don't have the right perspective.
  • But on the flip side IDC is unfair to NT becuase most people buy it installed.
  • Point 1. Different situation. Win98 only had great benefits if you had new hardware because of support for USB, etc. Thus not to many people upgraded existing Win95 computers with Win98.
    Compare this to the upgrade from Win3.1 to Win95. Win2000 is a similar leap.

    Point 2. I have seen no decline in number of existing servers. I think your show your lack of understanding by pointing to netcraft. The majority of servers in this world do not exist as web servers.

    Point 3. Are you saying that this is a strength of Linux? That's almost laughable as support for legacy software has never been a design criteria for Linux.

    Point 4. Actually W2K is exceeding the hype. I know up until I saw Beta 3 I was pretty much of the opinion it'd be more of the same. Same with the media, but once betas began to be released the reviews have all been "Wow!".

    Point 5. Win2K will likely start off with slow sales. But I don't see how you expect to leverage this into a strength for Linux.

    Frankly given the lack of testing regarding Year 2000 issues which has been performed with Linux and other Open Source software I wouldn't be surprised that there won't be a huge Linux failure on 1/1/2000.

    Oh, and as to your question... What's the safe bet for a platform that will thrive... Windows 2000 is your answer.


  • NT does not use the WDM, WDM started with Win98 and all drivers written specifically for 98 will also work on NT with the exeption of video drivers. Most vendors though will probably chose to optimize their drivers specifically for W2k though.
  • Does this mean that AD/NDS is a hack, of sorts, to make applications that weren't designed to be distributed work that way... i.e., that information can be written to a AD/NDS directory, shared, mirrored, locked, etc? All while looking like it's a normal filesystem? A distributed, hiarchical database, with files as the data and directories as the tables?

    Everything I read is in heavy marketspeak, mostly directed towards the differences in Active Directory and NDS, rather than saying what they actually do, which is why I've remained confused despite sincere efforts to understand. I have very little experience with NT or Novell, so Unix terminology and analogies would be particularly helpful :-)

  • I'm a consultant, which is different than a contractor. But frankly I am more afraid of having to support Linux because I already have more than enough work deploying solutions. I don't want to have to waste my time handholding a Linux box.

    Linux's TCO is much higher than NT. I don't quite understand why people keep insisting otherwise.
  • > Well I was a college student once myself so feel
    > qualified to say this... :)
    >
    > The reason is, because college students don't
    > have real work to get done, and as such Linux is
    > cool.

    Hmm, I knew a lot more people at school who ran servers or did serious software development with
    Linux (or other free Unix) than with any form of
    Windows.

    Now granted, we are talking small-scale web and
    ftp sites in most cases, but the fact is it seemed like it was a lot easier to get a web server up with a Linux or *BSD box and then essentially forget about it and have it Just Work than with a Windows machine.

  • M$ also has a W95 patch for this. I installed on our Winboxes just in case...
  • Let's be honest here - the only reason that Linux has really been taken up as rapidly as it has is the price. If you had to pay as much for Linux as you did for Solaris or HP-UX, face it, you wouldn't.

    Imagine going to the board of directors and saying "I want to spend tens of thousands of pounds to upgrade my servers [presumably NT :-) ] to Linux because, well, heck because I want to and I personally don't like Microsoft". I mean, how much ice would that cut?
  • Who cares if NT (errr...Win00) steals the media's attention in 2008 or whenever MS gets around to releasing their next version of boat. I will always have my Linux - MS will never be able to kill it. Linux will continue to improve and it will continue to outpace NT regardless of how many adds MS buys. So I don't really care - I'm plain sick of the media and 100% buzzword compliant companies. Linux works, it works well, I have complete control over my Linux boxen - I don't care what MS does.
  • 1. Anyone who has been paying attention to the past few Microsoft releases would know that they have been increasingly less popular than expectations predicted.

    Not necessarily true. Experienced MS OS users know that if they want bugfixes, they need to upgrade and update. (Not unlike experienced Linux users needing to update.) Don't think that PHBs are suddenly going to wise up and realize that buying W2K isn't a great idea.

    4. W2k will not live up to the hype.

    Again, this is nothing new. MS users are either used to it or are probably not going to have success with Linux. (Ahhhhh! Where's my mouse???!!!)

    5. Finally, there's Y2k. Nobody's going to make any major changes to their mission-critical now, and in January there will be enough mopping-up to do that they'll delay still more.

    I hear this a lot, but I think it applies more to larger, older networks than to recently-purchased stuff. Also, who says that W2K will be out in time to sell well before the end of the year?

    -Imperator

  • Does anyone else find these numbers a little strange? 24% by cost = 14% by volume?? The competition here is Linux, NT, commercial Unix in various flavours, proprietory OSes and free Unixen. All but the free alternatives cost more than Linux (assuming you pay, which is not actually necessary), so how come the volume percentage is lower than the cost percentage? What am I missing? The term 'Server Applience Revenue'. The article makes a distinction between appliences and 'traditional servers'. Also, the prediction is for the cost of hardware + software sold in 2003. It appears that they are expecting the higher end applience boxes to be running linux. Later in the article, they refer to 'traditional server'. Dataquest noted that Linux will account for much less in the traditional server market. By 2003, it will represent $1.9 billion, or 3.4 percent of traditional server revenue. That represents 450,000 units, or 8.1 percent of shipments.
  • I care about how many linux servers i can install today.

    Where do you want to go today?

    *grins, runs, ducks projectiles*

    -Imperator

  • Two things come into play:

    1/ Caldera and others are creating point and click interfaces for Linux,

    2/ Everybody I know who's currently in the education system (and most of the Unix admins I know) is into Linux. In three years the market will be teaming with Linux admins. In ten years those Linux admins will be making purchasing decisions.

  • So IDC expects Linux to hit 40% of the server market by unit count by 2003, and Dataquest expects it to hit 8.1% of units (450K Linux units) by 2003. (Only 450K server units in 2003?)

    The discrepancy is rather large here.

    Explanations other than Dataquest/IDC wild-ass-guessing, anyone? Is there some other terminology or market definition difference between DQ and IDC for 'server OS units'?

  • Well, Bob Metcalfe predicted the total collapse of the Internet [infoworld.com] in 1995. True to form, he literally ate his own words [infoworld.com] in 1997 when he admitted his earlier mistake.
    ----------
  • MS has already (quietly) admitted that the widely-hyped Active Directory is not a directory at all (in the sense of X.500 and LDAP) but rather a flat pseudo-directory.
    Can someone explain just what Active Directory is? Or point, perhaps, to an online description. A lot of people seem to think it's the cat's meow...

    [would the Hurd's [gnu.org] translators be similar, or BSD shadow filesystems? Oh, I don't even have the slightest idea of what AD is, so it probably doesn't matter]

  • Our network admin (for the entire enterprise, not just a "site admin") is a certified ignoramus. She's in charge of NT and Novell (with a couple Unix, etc oddballs) machines and she knows diddly. Calls the programmers in to create batch files, has never heard of Perl, still creates NT users with the GUI (even though 99% of them are identical and could be scripted), etc ad nauseum. What's even funnier is that she's gone to week-long training classes on NT, Exchange, SQL Server, etc and yet still knows nothing. (The only reason I said the above was "funny" was that I don't have to work with/for her. If I did, I would quit after a month.)
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • Counting OS shipments (as opposed to shipments of pre-installed oSes only) would include OEM shipments ... which accounts for the pre-installed machines, as well as the OS licenses that are bought but never installed.
  • Point 1: If your a home user Win00 is not going to add any *real* value as a desktop. In fact, it is only going to run slower. So I don't expect many people running Win95/98 to upgrade to Win2K.

    Point 2: You offer not stats. The netcraft studies - although only web servers - is a very large sample and should be a pretty fair reflection of server activity. If NT server numbers where once growning and they are now declining that is a pretty good indication of market momentum

    Point 3: Linux has been around since '91. Kernels 1.x, 2.0.x, 2.2.x have gone though major changes. Meanwhile, the applications have needed very little change. Further, because most of it is OSS, minor changes to source are no big deal.

    Point 4: I have used Win00 beta 3 - I was unimpressed. Win00 is bloatware - it will take about a year after its release until it is close to enterprise ready.

    Point 5: Despite what MS would have you to believe - people can't affort to just wait around for vaporware. While some people will wait for Win00 and all the MS promises it will be - most people need an email/web/ftp/smb/etc server _NOW_ and many will use Linux instead of waiting.

    "Frankly given the lack of testing regarding Year 2000 issues which has been performed with Linux and other Open Source software I wouldn't be surprised that there won't be a huge Linux failure on 1/1/2000."

    Your FUD skills are quite good - MS employee? As I said, pure FUD. The Linux source has been looked over by more eyes than even MS can afford to pay. I doubt anyone will have Linux problems on 1/1/2000
  • It's doubled approximately 28 times to get to where it is now, and at a very predictable rate. It only needs to double 4 more times to reach 60%. Given that it's doubled 28 times without much trouble, well.. you do the math.
    OK, I did the math. We start with 1 user. We double that 28 times. We now have have 2^28 users or ~268Million users. We double 4 more times, that's 2^32 users. ~4Billion users. That's not 60% of the server market, that's 60% of the entire planet earth. We double once more and we have 2^33 users. Wow. We're now out of people to use linux. We'll have to start marketing to the aliens that transmeta keeps in its underground bunkers.


  • TCO (Score:1)

    by Natedog ( 11943 )
    There is no evidence to support the claim that Linux's TCO is higher than NT - this idea comes from an interview with Ed Muth (a MS Exec) - no supprise.

    Linux doesn't require a re-install every 6 months to 1 year as my experiance has been. Linux won't start BSODing, and acting strange just because you install a new product. You install it, config it once, and the it just works all the time - what a concept! Further - if a user needs something changed/installed an admin can do a remote login, make the changes, and then log out without even going to the machine. I'd be more willing to say that a properly administered Linux/UNIX network will have a lower TCO in the longrun.
  • I work as a developer for a company (not Microsoft) that writes Windows CE apps and dev tools. I haven't done any CE network programming, but I've seen what's there. CE supports practically all the network protocols that NT does, including IP, TCP, UDP, PPP, RAS, and more.
  • One intesting thing for you to look up is the Windows 40 day bug, or something like that. Basically if you were able to keep a Windows machine up for 40 days straight without rebooting it would crash because of over-writing something. It wasn't discovered for several years because NO ONE WAS ABLE TO KEEP A Windows MACHINE UP THAT LONG!

    Yes, that's true, although don't forget that's Windows 95/98, _not_ Windows NT/2000.

    The bug is in the OS's tick counter, which is only a 32 bit counter... after ~47 days, the counter suffers an overrun, and the machine crashes. This has been fixed in 98 SE, I believe.

    Cheers
    Alastair
  • >Does this mean that AD/NDS is a hack, of sorts,
    >to make applications that weren't designed to be
    >distributed work that way... i.e., that
    >information can be written to a AD/NDS
    >directory, shared, mirrored, locked, etc? All
    >while looking like it's a normal filesystem? A
    >distributed, hiarchical database, with files as
    >the data and directories as the tables?

    No, not really...you would have to have directory hooks in your applications in order to make them directory enabled....as for filesystem analogy, yes, you can look at the directory structure the same way as you would look at the file directory tree, but this is only the structural look, the directory structure provides you with much more functionality than filesystem only....
    The whole directory thing is a very broad and still emerging subject and it is kind of hard to sum it up in a /. post...if you are into thick books, try "Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services" by Howes et al. (ISBN 1578700701)...this book is considered *the* book on the subject of directories.

    >I have very little experience with NT or Novell, >so Unix terminology and analogies would be >particularly helpful :-)

    Exactly opposite here...:) This whole UNIX/Linux thing is brand new to me...As for NDS, I think (hope) that it will become (or evolve into) de facto directory standard, so take notice!

  • I know that this is totally offtopic but isn't your sig ("I see that I have turned my eyes to a treasure no less dear than the treasure of Thingol that Beren once desired.") what Elassar (Strider) says about Arwen when he falls in love for her in "The Lord Of The Rings"?
  • >Who cares if.......yadi yadi yada

    Must be nice to be independently wealthy or self employed. The rest of us have to 'speak' to someone and those someones aren't technical enough to know what is a Microsoft lie/press release and what is REALLY going on.

    2008 would be nice for a NT 5 release date but I think you're dreaming. Microsoft will likely ship it within the next 6-9 months and release fixes shortly after to stop the bleeding. They can't afford to let Linux run the press as it has and they can't pull a 3 year delay like Win95. They need the product shipping. I think you're right in that it will be a flop because of the bloat.

    In the Internet age.............
    Linux: A fighter jet is far more usefull because of its speed...

    NT: A tank with 12" thick armor, which only covers 60% of the vehicle, will be useless even though it might keep lumbering along IF the armor is hit....NT
  • I, for one, expect Windows 2000 to flop rather nicely in the server market.

    I, on the other hand, prefer to be more cautious in my predictions. I think Microsoft will successfully leverage y2k panic-buying into massive sales for Windows 2000. The press will gleefully report this as the death of Linux. It will be, as with NT 4, two whole years before there is significant media coverage of the shortcomings of W2k. By the time this happens though, the press will have caught on to the fact that W2k hasn't put a dint in the exponential growth of Linux, and Microsoft will have seen the writing on the wall and begun the transition into a respectable team player in the software industry.

  • Dataquest isn't really a group I consider a purveyor of reliable information. Just look at their past predictions on the growth of NT (They've been wrong a LOT). For a long time they were considered a mouthpiece for MS products.

    It's not that this is not good news for Linux users -- it's definately a sign that the winds of public opinion are changing direction. It's just that Dataquest reports tend to be reflective of what is trendy and buzzworthy, not necessarily what is statistically sound.
  • Not a day goes by without my reading (me reading?) about x having y% of the z market by the year (2000 + w). I'd love to have the time/inclination to keep a database of these predictions and find out if any of them turned out to be actually true.
    When was the last time you read a press release that said 'five years ago we said this. We were right'?
  • These articles all have misleading titles. If you read the actual contents of the articles, they explicitly say:

    It estimates Linux servers will account for $3.8 billion, or 24 percent, of the worldwide server appliance revenue by 2003. By volume, that represents 14 percent, or 1.1 million units. ... Dataquest noted that Linux will account for much less in the traditional server market. By 2003, it will represent $1.9 billion, or 3.4 percent of traditional server revenue. That represents 450,000 units, or 8.1 percent of shipments.

    A server appliance is not a "traditional" server. What operating systems are used in server appliances? Probably *BSD, Linux, NT, and a tiny fraction of proprietary others? So in four years, which operating systems are used in the other 76% of server applicances? Which operating systems are used in the other 92% of "traditional" servers?





  • Most predictions that are done are rarely close unless they are not very specific. It would be nice if Linux could capture that much of the market by 2003. But unless people make the major shift from one OS to the next I don't see that happening.
    (I have to admit though, switching from NT to Linux is worth it, but it is very time consuming..once your on one OS, most people stick with it.)
  • Does anybody else find it the least bit amusing that the C|NET article (link from summary @ linuxworld) includes a quote along the lines of "Interest in Linux will fade when Microsoft ships its first service pack for Windows 2000 server."?

    Why not have an OS that comes out with patches soon enough to make a difference?

    I think that the people who make the server platform decisions know enough to realize that Windows 2000 is not the ideal route, and will attempt to phase it out even before it arrives.
  • Does anyone else find these numbers a little strange? 24% by cost = 14% by volume?? The competition here is Linux, NT, commercial Unix in various flavours, proprietory OSes and free Unixen.

    All but the free alternatives cost more than Linux (assuming you pay, which is not actually necessary), so how come the volume percentage is lower than the cost percentage? What am I missing?

  • linear mortals (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    chaos theory
    nonlinearity
    dumb luck
    do these mean _anything_ to people who believe such foolish predictions about future growth?
  • The article submitted to slashdot is somewhat misleading. The 24% number is for black box appliances. We're not talking about serious big iron. More like workgroup web servers. Time to fire up the vi vs. emacs flame fest!
  • If you read the C|NET article [news.com], you will find that the study refers to the "server appliance" market, not the "server market". This refers to out-of-the-box server "solutions" like the NetWinder [rebel.com].

    The article also says that Dataquest predicts Linux-based systems will account for 8.1 percent of the "traditional server" market. I think that's underrating Linux by quite a bit.
  • Not that big of a deal

  • Just to nitpick. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think that data is off by a little bit.

    First, I think Linux already accounts for at least 20% of the server market -- it's just not openly shared. It's the kind of thing that engineers sneak past dim-witted IT managers.

    Second,
    Linux, developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, then a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, is considered a more stable version of the older Unix operating system.

    Shouldn't that be, " More Stable than Windows NT ? " Because Linux is DEFINATELY more stable than NT, but I thought it was pretty much "On Par" with the other Unices.

    And Finally,
    " Linux will continue to grow as an operating system deployed on new server hardware, but much of the hype surrounding Linux will fade once Microsoft ships a service pack for Windows 2000 server, " Brown said.

    Let's not forget that the so-called " Linux-Hype " survived the release of Windows 98®, so I'm pretty sure the Hype of Windows2K isn't enough to smother the well deserved credit and attention that Linux receives.
  • I dont care about how many linux servers there will be by 2003. I care about how many linux servers i can install today. they all will still be there by 2003 (*grin*)
  • Linux is more stable than NT. It is not as stable as commercial UNIX systems on Intel chips (like BSDI).

  • Maybe, but... (Score:3)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Monday July 19, 1999 @10:35AM (#1795283) Homepage
    I can see Linux becoming a fair sized player in the server market, but unfortunately I think any gains it makes will be primarily at the expense of other UN*Xes and not NT.

    Reasoning: More NT "admins" couldn't handle a command line to save their lives. Sure, it may be faster and more powerful and, on occassion, even a more simple way to handle things (compare setting up Apache vs. IIS), but just the thought of doing anything beyond clicking on radio boxes will scare the hell out of 'em. Sort of an advanced technophobia -- an extension of the people who are terrified to even use a computer lest they screw something up.

    Sad, really. There are a lot of NT admins (not all, and not even the majority, but still a lot) who should feel guilty about picking up their paychecks. I mean, if a company pays you to come up with computing solutions, it seems really unfair to rule out an entire line of products and possibilities just because you don't know enough to really do your job.

    Of course, this article was about appliance servers, but we'll ignore that for now.

    ----

  • Unless CNET was in a hurry to get some copy out, this isn't much of a report. 25% of server-appliance sales (not servers, not server sales, just preconfigured colorful boxes, e.g. the netwinder). I took more issue with the "traditional server sales" paragraph, such as it was:

    "...Linux will account for much less in the traditional server market... 3.4% of traditional server revenue." Well, duh -- Linux servers aren't sold as such, they're sold as blank machines and one installs Linux from elsewhere. Take the 3-5 million servers kicking Linux around out there (assume they represent the same growth rate as between now and DQ's 2003; probably wrong, but skip that for a moment). DataQuest's 450k servers over a $1.9B market share give a server price average of $4222; if this is 3.4% of total revenue, then the total market is $55.83B. Back to the 3-5 million servers (suppose 4); at $4222 each one finds $16.88B, or 30.2%.

    All that said, the 4 million could be way off, and server-sales figures are a miserable estimate of relative product performance except where marketroids are concerned.

  • http://www.sunworld.com/swol-04-1999/swol-04-idcli nux.html

    IDC said that the Linux server market was 17.2% in 1998 and predicted an annual growth rate of 25% until 2003. That means that by 2002, Linux would be more than 40% of the server market.

    Given that Linux makes A LOT more sense than NT or commercial Unixes for 'server appliances' (no per-seat license fees, no duplication license fees, and open source adaptability), I think Linux will be a considerably larger part of the market than 23% by 2003.
  • How can anyone make an accurate prediction about server status years from now before Win 2K comes out? No one knows what kind of support that will garner...
  • The Elsa GLoria card (EXTREMELY high-end, last year) in my machine didn't have a Win2K driver. I was running a $750 video card at 640x480 on a 21" monitor. It was not fun. I managed to get Win2K to grudgingly accept the NT 4.0 drivers, but it gives weird error messages in the Monitors control panel. At least it's at 1280x1024 now though.

    That's the only thing I've had to scrounge for drivers with so far though (mostly because everything else in this Compaq is stock stuff.)

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • Not true...
    From everything I've heard/read, Win2k is going to be marketed as BOTH. Why?!!!

    Oh joy, I can't wait to do tech support for all the home-pc owners who installed 2k as an upgrade for 98!


    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • I hated -- loathed -- it at first. Then 4.3 came out. I've found it to be the easiest Unix -- commercial or otherwise -- to administer and use (I've adminned IRIX, AIX, Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD in a professional setting.) The administrative tool is incredibly well-done and the OS itself is rock-solid to boot.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • hey there are companies out there that are trying to make linux more mainstream. one of them is Buypogo.com that is starting to sell $299 and $599 linux PC's.
    It'll take companies like them who will take on the next phase of widespread linux acceptance. Anything other than MS is fine with me, actually!

    check out their site. http://www.buypogo.com
  • Yah - I'm getting ready to put in a job req for a web/unix admin.

    All my guys are Novell with some NT knowledge. They're slowly working on their unix skills but it takes time.
  • Yeah, my "boss" is such a person. Completely clueless, and he calls me 20-30x a day asking me how to do all manner of stupid shit. Lately I've been very short with him. What an idiot.
  • Isn't it a supposed super great thing about Linux that bugs get fixed instantly and perpetually? If that's the case then what's the problem with MS expediting bug fixes?

    It's not a problem that they're EXPEDITING bug fixes. The problem is that they're planning for a rollout of bug fixes AFTER people will supposedly have bought many copies of their software. They must not care about their company's reputation much anymore, if they're willing to outright admit that they have bugs "but we're going to fix them... AFTER the product ships." Personally, I'd want to take the time to fix major bugs (and as many minor ones as is possible) BEFORE ship time.

    But then, I do care about my reputation.
  • I know i respect someone who uses words like fuckface and leaves no name. BTW it's fuck face.
  • why was this downgraded?
    i don not think it is offtopic.
    not many ppl where proven to be prophets.
    too many try - not many are right when
    they predict. i predict 74.23432532% OS
    Share by 2089, hardy har har (prove me
    wrong if you still live then supersuckers)
  • DataQuest has been wrong so many times that they look like they get their numbers from Microsoft. The fact that the story has so many errors or inaccuracies tells me that this may just be another Microsoft funded report. Note that they say Linux hype will fade after service pack #1 ships for Windows NT v5/2000.....

    Why don't we all just use what works best today and let the future unfold itself instead of letting Microsofts PR decide the future?
  • ...it won't get much support at all. Some drivers would be nice, Microsoft. (Yeah, I know it's the hardware manufacturers' faults, but, shit, W2K doesn't support much of *anything*.)

    I won't be recommending Win2K to my company anytime soon. It's more aggravating than NT 4 is, which says a lot.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • The last time Microsoft had some REAL competition in the OS sector was in 1994 when IBM dumped $200Million on marketing of OS/2 Warp v3. Microsoft was waaay late with Windows 95 and to keep its market they spent over $500Million on a worldwide campaign to tell the world where they wanted them to go. Windows 98 had nothing close to even IBMs silly ads. Stealth marketing because they wanted most to be going to Windows NT. Well, that is very late and has competition from Linux. I predict NT v5/2000 is going to get a pretty big sendoff. Will the press swallow that pill? If they do, Linux will be hurt in the eyes of the unanointed (read IT/IS Management) by not having mindshare. History lesson concluded. :)
  • Sadly you're rather on the mark about most NT admins not being able to handle command line stuff.

    I can't change out the NT servers for linux ones where I work... one of the prodominate reasons is that none of the other techs understand how to operate in that environment.

    Lowest common denominator wins sometimes. I long for the day where I can sit at a Linux console all day. Anyone got a job opening or a current NT admin who would rather be a Linux admin? :)
  • Can Windows 2000 use "old" NT4 device drivers? I thought Windows 2000 used the WDM (Windows Driver Model?) that Windows 98 uses, but I can't imagine Windows 98 and 2000 supporting binary compatible device drivers!
  • I'd have to agree with you there. I would also like to point out that the "statistically sound" view of linux is that it will have over 60% of the market by 2003, given the rate of doubling. It's doubled approximately 28 times to get to where it is now, and at a very predictable rate. It only needs to double 4 more times to reach 60%. Given that it's doubled 28 times without much trouble, well.. you do the math.



    --
  • add to that "post-modern"
  • Point #1.
    - I'm not sure how important that is. If a Linux box is brought in past the so called dim-witted managers, it's likely not doing production work.

    Point #2.
    - Uhh, no. Personally I have seen no proof indicating Linux to be more stable than NT, it's definately not on par with Solaris, HPUX, SCO, Digital Unix, etc.

    Point #3.
    - Windows 98 was a "ho hum" event to nearly everybody. It was nothing new, just Win95 with upgraded hardware support. Windows 95 and NT was where it was at in '95/96, and at that time OS/2 was the boy wonder of the Media.

    When Win95 came out, the OS/2 hype began to fade. When NT 4.0 came out OS/2 died a deserving death...

    Frankly I think Linux is in the same position right now as OS/2 was in '94. The media likes to report about "new" things, and there is not much new in the Windows world.

    Having worked with the Windows 2000 beta, when it is shipped the storm of publicity will be huge. Microsoft is making this off as the greatest OS every written for the PC, and I'd have to agree to a great extent. Even Solaris x86 doesn't have the features Win2K has.

    Ohwell... I don't know how important Gartner group is, they jumped on the network computer a few years back as well.
  • Does anybody else find it the least bit amusing that the C|NET article (link from summary @ linuxworld)
    includes a quote along the lines of "Interest in Linux will fade when Microsoft ships its first service pack for
    Windows 2000 server."?

    Why not have an OS that comes out with patches soon enough to make a difference?

    Offhand, I'd say that they are refering to the traditional 'wait and see' approach that the marketplace takes with new MS (or any company, actually) products. Everyone knows that the early adopters are going to have headaches, so companies wait until the SP to introduce the product to any large degree into the company.

    While I do agree that it would make a lot more sense to get it right the first time, MS customers are not alone in this regard. How many companies that use Linux in their companies upgrade to the new Kernels as soon as it comes out? I'd hazard to guess not many. Most will generally stick with a stable Kernel that provides them the functionality that they need.
  • I have Slackware on the drive of a 386DX-25 box that I put together for a friend (so when she is ready to take the plunge and learn how to set up networking on her main machine, she will have a stable machine to stick on the other end of the wire for testing, playing, etc). It is looking like it will still be around in 2003. Wether it will be powered up anytime between now and then is the question, though. . .
  • It sounds like (and this is a growth area for more hardware and OSes) they are talking about embedded server applications. So possibly they will be head-to-head against stuff like Windows CE (does it even have a TCP/IP stack yet?!?) and things like QNX. There's no denying that it's one option for that kind of 'server', i.e. running on the little embedded boards they're putting on cards as small as a SIMM these days. Stick it in the refrigerator and the milkman can hit it once a day to see if you need another half gallon delivered. Put 'em in gas/water/electric meters so the billers can measure peak usage stuff and bill accordingly.

  • In ten years the technology will be so widespread and known that a Linux admin will be making 7 bucks an hour. That won't be much in 2009, by the way.
  • I think he is referring to "site admins" - the type that isn't really an administrator at all anyway, probably just the most computer literate in the office who takes care of adding users and such.

    This kind of person definitely couldn't handle the cli, I've met enough of them to know. And they don't write batch files either.

    But I don't see why they couldn't use linuxconf.
  • So then by 2004 it will have 120% of the market?
  • Personally, I trust IDC more. IDC looks like they looked at OS software sales, and DataQuest looks like they are measuring preinstalled OS machine shipments.

    Considering I've bought or received many "NT preinstalled" machines and then happily installed Linux over them, looking at shipments of machines with a preinstalled OS is not fair.

    For one, it is bound to ignore the 'clone makers' who together amount to nearly 40% of server shipments. It favors the big PC makers who are probably locked into contracts with Microsoft requiring X number of servers to ship with NT pre-installed.

    It also does not consider installs of Linux over NT on new machines or old machines given new life by installing Linux. A lot of Linux's growth is on machines made obsolete by Microsoft's bloat.

    IDC also went out of their way to point out that there is a large element of the Linux market that CAN'T be measured. Linux can be installed over Internet for free. Also, unlike NT or a commercial Unix, when you buy one copy of RedHat, you can install that CD to more than one server machine.

    IDC has many sources of revenue, making them not-so-dependant on income from these reports, so they can afford to be objective. DataQuest/Gartner is certainly no Mindcraft, but they may not have seen as much of an incentive to count "free" shipments of Linux.
  • W2K has a bad gotcha to it as well. Despite their hype that it is backward compatable with the 4.0 you don't gain any of the real new features for the most part until EVERYTHING is at W2k. Sure you get a couple of the more minor ones but nothing to justify the cost involved.

  • Somewhat possible to tell now... (Score:5)

    by Frater 219 ( 1455 ) on Monday July 19, 1999 @11:11AM (#1795327) Journal
    I, for one, expect Windows 2000 to flop rather nicely in the server market. Here's why:

    1. Anyone who has been paying attention to the past few Microsoft releases would know that they have been increasingly less popular than expectations predicted. IIRC, MS shipped about half as many Windows 98 upgrades as they expected in the first few months; 98 became dominant not on the strength of upgrades but on the strength of the growth of the new-PC market. The idea that people need to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading is declining.

    2. NT itself has peaked and is in decline in some server markets, notably the Web server market. Microsoft Web servers have been declining in market share for months on the Netcraft survey of Web servers [netcraft.com]. People are realizing that Microsoft systems are not reliable and scalable, much less enterprise-ready. Why buy more of the same?

    3. W2k will break some third-party software that runs fine under current NT releases. This is just how MS operates. Sites which expect not to have catastrophic failures will wait and test W2k for some time before deploying it as a replacement for current NT systems, as the Gartner Group recommended several months ago. In the meantime, sites which rush ahead and move to W2k will have the usual early-adopter problems that any new system has. This will generate horror stories which will reduce other sites' interest in W2k. Vendors of Unix- and Linux-based systems will, if they know what they're doing, capitalize on these failures. (They may even FUD Microsoft back, though of course I wouldn't support that ....)

    4. W2k will not live up to the hype. MS has already (quietly) admitted that the widely-hyped Active Directory is not a directory at all (in the sense of X.500 and LDAP) but rather a flat pseudo-directory. Expect more of the same.

    5. Finally, there's Y2k. Nobody's going to make any major changes to their mission-critical now, and in January there will be enough mopping-up to do that they'll delay still more.

    Windows 2000 may well be a good deal better than NT. But will people gamble their businesses on it to the degree they've gambled them on NT? I think we can expect not.

    Meanwhile, Linux-based systems are doing nothing but growing. What's the safe bet if you want to be using a platform that will continue to grow, survive, and thrive over the next ten years?
  • Funny how the first Service Pack for Windows 2000 will (somehow) reduce interest in Linux in the year 2003. I read that Microsoft is targeting November 1999 for releasing Windows 2000. I bet Microsoft is triaging bugs like crazy to release Windows 2000 ASAP. They already know what bugs will be shipped now and fixed later. They probably already have a release date for SP1 less than six months after Windows 2000. A "silent" SP1 was released for IE4 just one month after IE4.0 was released.
  • Of course, in fact they rely solely on "dumb luck" in order to be right about anything.
  • Can Windows 2000 use "old" NT4 device drivers?
    Nope. I was rewarded with a BSOD at startup when I tried the nVidia Detenator drivers with build 2000. To W2k's credit, it realized that the video drivers caused the crash and reset them to plain vga.

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