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Linux Business

Linux Is Cheaper 488

Posted by timothy from the reload-redux dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is running a story on what a lot of us already know: Linux IS cheaper than Windows. This not because it is free. It is because Linux admins, although slightly more expensive, can handle a significantly larger number of systems than their Windows counterparts."
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Linux Is Cheaper More

Linux Is Cheaper

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  • Completely subjective (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree.davidglover@org> on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:16PM (#5016126) Homepage
    I never understood the X is cheaper than Y argument. Surely, it must depend on what you're using your OS for, how many servers you're running, etc?

    I have no doubt that Linux is cheaper in a lot of situations, but I am also sure that Windows, or indeed any other OS, is cheaper for some things.

    There can be no one perfect solution.

    • Many things are subjective, such as beliefs and experiences. But whether a particular type of sysadmin running a particular OS is certainly not subjective.

      Now, it may be the problem is defined inexactly. And depending on how we fill in all the parameters to the problem we end up with different solutions. But this would make the solution relative, not subjective.
      • Meaning 4 of "subjective" from the handy-dandy dictionary on my desk says "peculiar to a particular individual". Therefore, which OS is cheapest depends on who you are, and by extension, what you're doing.
        • You are misinterpreting the definition. If subjective just meant "peculiar to a particular individual", then all types of things would be subjective that are not. For example, some dude drank a snake oil like medicine that made his skin turn blue. You could say that being blue was "peculiar" to this person. This does not make it subjective. "Subjective" applies to opinions, beliefs, and knowledge.

          The "peculiar" person you stick in the situation of being a sysadmin may determine the outcome of a cost-efficiency equation. But this will be the case no matter what anyone believes. This is no more subjective than my wearing a fancy and unique hat is subjective.

          Of course, you could say "By 'subjective' I mean no more than being 'peculiar' to a person." And if you used it enough that way, it may actually catch on, and your usage would become correct ex post facto. But your current usage is certainly not correct according to the common usage of the term, just ask any English teacher.
          • Read the m-w.com definition--There's actually a long speil on the topic of "subjective". The definition that I like, and that pertains to this discussion is "modified or affected by personal views, experience, or background--a subjective account of the incident"-- The reason I chose this in relation to the discussion about cost is simply that depending on the person, certain expenses will matter more than others, and certain things will add up in more ways than others.

            Person A sees Linux as being an awkward unweildy solution, and hires three people to oversee a single Linux Server because he/she/or-it cannot understand "command line" and "easy" in relation to eachother. Person A hires one person to oversee the Windows computer--hence, the cost of operation of the Windows computer is significantly less, and the Linux admins have a whole lot of spare time in which they can build robots out of spare parts, and play war games with Nerf guns.

            Person B sees things in an entirely different light, and hires the same number of people, only the Windows machine gets the larger staff.

            Person C is entirely competant and doesn't bother hiring anyone. Instead he converts the Windows server over to Linux and takes care of the job himself. Or maybe he converts it over to Windows. Whatever the story is.

            In every scenario, the SUBJECTIVE opinions and ideas of the managerial staff is the sole reason for the higher or lower budgets per OS.

            All things being equal, and with competant staff, the management cost is going to be lower for Linux, simply because of the lower cost of the OS, the software that runs under it, the increased performance-without-increased-resources issue, and any number of other issues.

            In the "real world" where subjectivity reigns, the outcome of the situation will very likely be completely different, with different experiences depending on different people, the skillset of the people, salaries asked, etc. Call it the subjectivity of the Gods.

            -Sara
            • Ok, if I'm understanding you correctly, then I have no argument. The subjective beliefs of management may determine whether Linux or Windows ends up being more costly. Agreed. And certain other factors will be subjective as well. Whether the command line interface is easier or harder can be a subjective opinion. And whether closed source or open source is better can also be subjective.

              But what cannot be subjective is the cost for a given scenario. Once the manager has chosen to hire X people for administering the Linux boxen, and Y people for administering the Windows boxen, it is an objective fact that one will cost more, less, or the same as the other.

              The line may be blurred a bit because the manager can creatively interepret the balance sheet, placing Windows cost under "general staff", and placing Linux administration under it's own category. In this case, Windows will cost nothing and Linux will cost more, because of the way costs are interpreted.

              This happens all the time in IT. I may be the only one assigned to a project, but I get someone else in the company to help me out. Suddenly less work is being done for the other guy's project and more for my own. But rarely does his salary get tagged onto the cost of my own project. So my project will seem cheaper than it really is.

              So perhaps the way that costs are attributed to Linux vs. Windows is subjective. But I still don't think so. I think in the above scenario and ones like it the real problem is that there is no easy way to divide up the costs among employees working on different things. There is no good methodology for attributing costs. But I think if the methodology is subjective, it should be rejected.

              I still believe the original poster was using the term "subjective" in a place where "relative" should have been used. It seems like a pedantic point, but it is important. If the cost is subjective, then neither system can ever objectively be more or less expensive than the other. If the cost is relative, however, then we put the question into more exact terms and get an objective answer.
    • Cost of ownership is a lot less imp9ortant than functionality. Most enterprises would consider having email and calendering that meet their needs the first consideraton.

      OK so you will have someone leaping in the air shouting that Thnidnifv3.14 offers comparable calendaring to Outlook and Exchange and is just as easy to use, provided of course your users are not complete loser morons and know how to handle a punch card interface with a command set in Hierattic.

      The issue for most enterprises is not the cost of their system, it is the cost of switching. Compared to the costs of mainframe software of the past Microsoft's offerings are dirt cheap.

      The part missed out of the equation here is the users. I don't care what slashdot readers consider the greatest software to be, the users at my company mostly disagree. If an IT support person comes out and announces he is moving their systems to Linux whether they like it or not he is going to be fired before the end of the week.

      People complain when they are forced to use Microsoft products. They should understand that others will complain if forced to use Linux or a Mac.

      • Bunk...the users don't pay for admin costs nor do they answer to stockholders.

        Users complain when their starting time gets moved or they have to park further from the front gate. The Manager that makes the decision never gets fired for making these kinds of adjustments. Done properly, it should be nearly transparent, just like moving a hub or adding more drive space.
      • Well then you have to take in account the time for the emploies to learn to use these system. So even if Thnidnifv3.14 is comparable but it effect the performance of the user then that is also part of Cost of Ownership. If these people can use these applications by reflex then they are to use an other system they need to retrain themselfs and thus loosing productivty for a time. And a lost of productivity cost money.

    • Re:Completely subjective (Score:5, Interesting)

      by doorbot.com ( 184378 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @08:50PM (#5016606) Journal
      I never understood the X is cheaper than Y argument.

      Perhaps I'm responding to a troll here, but I will assume for the moment that you really don't understand the need for comparison.

      Microsoft is in business to make money, and so is RedHat. Hopefully that's not a surprise. They are actually competitors, and in order to compete, and to generate revenues, they need customers to purchase their product. This is done by demonstrating to the customer that their product is better than their competitor's -- remember that customers don't have "perfect information" so advertising/marketing/education is needed. If customers already knew which product was best, then there would be no need to try and persuade customers (the merits of the product would have already done this).

      Now, let's assume you're a business owner and you want to computerize your office. You're smart enough to realize that no solution will be perfect, but you still need something (if you never did anything because you couldn't find the "perfect" solution you'd go out of business pretty quickly). So what happens is you compare all of the products available to you, and you will decide, as best you can, on the "best" solution. Often cost is the primary factor, which is why Microsoft/RedHat/Sun want you to think their solution has the highest cost/benefit ratio.

      There can be no one perfect solution.

      While true, this answer solves nothing. If you're going to pound a square peg in a round hole, wouldn't you rather it be the cheapest/fastest/etc peg? If you can find the one round (perfect) peg, then you're ahead of the game...

  • Glad that clears that up (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous DWord ( 466154 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:17PM (#5016129) Homepage
    That other Slashdot story that told us what a lot of us already know: Windows IS cheaper than Linux was clearly hokum. This'll finally shut those monkeys up.

    Oh wait, the second sentence is Most analysts, if asked whether Linux has a lower TCO than other systems, will answer, "It depends."

    Glad they wrote a whole article about it.
    • All of Microsoft's advocates and apologists were going to comment about how that article is nonsense, and Linux just isn't any good, but their PCs crashed, and are on the blue screen of death. Guess they'll have to reboot before we hear from them.

  • The Ablative Horse (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:18PM (#5016135) Homepage Journal
    How much more beating can this dead horse take? I feel like I'm watching Gilligan's Island.

  • That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:18PM (#5016136) Homepage Journal
    It is because Linux admins, although slightly more expensive, can handle a significantly larger number of systems than their Windows counterparts.

    Th-they skirt over this point a bit too quickly. The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught.

    After all, how many great sysadmins spent years pouring over 'How to be a Linux admin' books, struggling to get their 'LCE' (Linux Certified Engineer) certificates? None. Unh. Yet that's exactly how Microsoft admins are raised.

    Linux admins (and originally users) are experimenters.. that's why they're not on the MS platform. Experimenters make good sysadmins, because they learn by themselves, learn clever admin tricks through experience, and, er, don't just rely on a bit of paper that says 'I'm a good sysadmin.'

    I'd be a bit weary about the point that Solaris admins can 'learn Linux' (ohh, unh) within a few weeks though. People from stricter UNIX disciplines think Linux is some, er, easy-to-learn UNIX renegade. (unh, unh) It ain't true folks, it's like deep and stuff.
    • "The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught."

      Perhaps. Thing is though, Windows isn't exactly that hard to maintain. The company I work for has had between 15-20 people over the last 5 years and runs on a mostly NT-based network. Have we had our share of difficulties? Sure. Have we ever needed an admin to maintain it? No. Most problems have been resolved by the people who stumbled over them. We had a sysadmin up until a couple of years ago. When he left, I absorbed his responsibilities. Yet, I still have plenty of time to post on /..

      I'm sure there's some truth to this in bigger companies, but Linux has been nothing but a problem for us here because the one person we have who can fix the problems is overloaded.

    • Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:4, Interesting)

      by _LORAX_ ( 4790 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:25PM (#5016171) Homepage
      Also rember that linux admins don't have to learn those Lies that they teach MSCE's. I have opened those book in the past only to find factual errors in how they represent windows. I KNOW they were wrong because I had to work around the problem under linux.

      It's no wonder they cant' cut it. They have to learn about these lies once they have been hired. They have to unlearn what they have learned.

    • Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @08:01PM (#5016350)
      I dont think being self taught makes a better admin. Being self taught can leave a lot of holes in SysAdmining. Having a good training class help give a better understanding on all the different features on Linux.
      The Primary reason why a Linux Admin can handle a lot more systems then a windows is basicly because Linux and Unix is designed to be admined remotely and work well with shared configuration. And without the extra licensing overhead the systems can be duplicated very easly.

      As the article said a good protions of the Admins are Solaris Administrators. So they have a good understanding of Linuxs features so switching to Linux is relitvly easy. And most of the Solaris Administrators have training as well.

      The Only reasion why a lot MSCE seem to be dumb as bricks is more of the fact they they are on the reasioning that I am Certified so I know everything. While someone who is unsertified or without the extra Ego baggage are willing to learn from other methods and try new things.
    • The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught.

      That's not the standard explanation that most Unix experts will usually give you. They'll say that the primary advantage of Unix (and by extension Linux) is that it was really designed to be administered by a full time admin from the ground up. So Unix and Linux have extensive built in facilities for remote administration, scripting everything, etc. OTOH, Windows was really designed to be administered by the user using desktop, GUI tools. All of its remote administration, scripting, etc. tools were grafted on late in its lifespan, so they lack the maturity and utility of their Unix equivalents.

    • The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught.

      And I think there's a lot more to this as well. Most Linux admins I've worked with have had deeper expertise in more areas - perhaps due to the requirement of "knowing more" to successfully operate a network application server (which Linux is typically thrown into). Yea, you'll still find a few programming language-centric admins (ugh)... but most are general purposed enough to have discovered how IP works on a server OS.

      For instance, you'd better know a bit about IP and network security when setting up an apache webserver, dns server, sendmail or qmail system, etc. Most Linux admins I've dealt with subsequently are rather aware of WAN protocols.

      However, throw a MCSE at a OSI layer three to five problem and they'll start blaming the version of the webbrowser or waste significant time in other application-layer space. I'd swear they never mention the OSI 7-layer model in Microsoft class.

      What's worse yet is that once these junior badge MCSE techies get their certification, they're convinced they know everything about networks and end up wasting other peoples time chasing down the wrong track. These people are costly and can cause a lot of damage to an organization through their stubborn ignorance.

      Maybe it's the learning model predicting the kind of employee; e.g. MCSE is often class-fed, much like cattle finished off at the feed lot. They're spoon fed the standard materials and led to believe they're all special people, sent off to change the world with their new cert. Linux admins, often self-taught, usually succeed by keeping their eyes open to learn things from others and won't spend weeks arguing with you when you're right.

      Best hiring decision you can make: pay the extra $10K/year for the "20 foot hole jumper" rather than getting yourself a couple of MCSE "3-foot-hole" types. You'll never regret it.

      *scoove*
      • Fixing a unix problem is usually made a LOT easier by the error messages.
        Typically if something goes wrong on a unix system, you will be given a usefull error message, that if all else fails you can paste into google and see what comes up.
        Contrast with windows, which often gives far less usefull error messages and frequently wont let you do anything else while the error requester is displayed on the screen. You are resorted to trial and error to fix the problem, a very time consuming process.
        People complain about the verboseness of unix/linux, but this is a GOOD THING.. even to newbies, if a newbie sees an error he could paste it to someone who knows how to deal with it.. instead of panicking and freaking out.

        The windows mentality has resulted in a lot of new linux users who assume the error messages are useless, thus they dont even read them atall.. they paste them to someone (like me) and ask for an explanation, usually i paste the error right back and they go "ohh, now i see"

  • Even so... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Escape Tangent ( 594982 )
    If linux were (pretend for a moment, I know it's hard) more expensive than Windows in terms of operating and management costs, what I'd realli like to know is whether or not it would still hold its own. I'd be willing to bet in favor of Linux, since it obviously has the advantage in security/stability/etc... but there's the real challenge: take away the price factor and you'll see the real winner.

  • Large scaleSmall scale (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jacer ( 574383 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:18PM (#5016138) Homepage
    Sure linux is cheaper if you're running five hundred servers, but where I used to work, we had only five servers, easily handeled by one admin
    • Which is exactly the point of the article. This is the first cost comparison I've seen that is somewhat intelligent. Using cost per processing unit (in this case 100,000 web site visits) is a great way to look at whats better for you on your scale and for your needs.

  • Another great strength of linux is (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:21PM (#5016149)
    Its i18n, l10n, p12n, and c11n! I can have linux in any language I want without having to buy my operating sytem in a country that uses that language. Its translated in to many more languages too, around 90 are avalible for kde alone!. nynorsk was avalible for years before Micrsoft supported it!

    Its still a bit rough (it could do with support for non gregorian calanders for example) but its proof that linux is for everyone everywhere!

    The real merits is not because it is free, but because it gives you a choice and control!

  • Does the TCO... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gorf ( 182301 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:23PM (#5016162)
    include the cost of working out the TCO?

  • Linux people are usually Do-It-Yourselfers... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dagg ( 153577 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:24PM (#5016168) Journal
    Most (maybe all...) linux people I know actually get real world problems taken care of. Why do they do it? Because they love learning knew things and applying that knowledge in the real world.

    In the short-run, this can sometimes hurt a business, because the DIY crowd often like to build it themselves rather than buy it. But in the long-term (and with proper management), having a crowd of DIY people will save you a bundle. While the windows support staff are stuck trying to install MS-Word, the linux folks are fixing router problems, patching security holes and tuning your intranets.

  • How man more servers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DASHSL0T ( 634167 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:25PM (#5016172) Homepage
    In the article, they talk about how a typical Windows admin can handle 10-15 boxes (sounds reasonable). But then they quote somebody who says his Linux/BSD/Solaris admins can handle 1,000 boxes. A thousands? This seems like an incredibly high number. Can anyone out there back this up? Can you guys really admin a *thousand* servers? Pointers would be welcome on how this is done...is it all perl/shell scripting?

    • Re:How man more servers? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kcurrie ( 4116 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @08:23PM (#5016447)
      I maintain a few services on ~9000 Solaris boxes, all across the world (you name it, India, Europe, North America, etc). I routinely run commands to do various things (check software installed, tweak syslog, install new ssh, install patches, etc) on 1000 boxes AT ONCE. Yes, at once, as in concurrently. We built a cluster of linux boxes using OpenMosix that allows us to do 1000 concurrent outgoing SSH sessions. We've developed some SSH load balancing tools that basically spread the authentication load of these 1000 sessions across several hundred ssh-agents.

      So yes, it IS reasonable that somebody can maintain 1000+ servers, depending on what they are doing. The key is CONSISTANCY. If all servers are one-offs installed by hundreds of people all in different ways things can be difficult, that's why we have standards. ..and yes, it is all perl/shell scripting, combined with the proper (typically homegrown) tools.

    • If you read again, the example they give has the Windows guy doing 10-15 (as you say), but the Linux guy is doing about 45. No one could admin 1000 boxes unless they were all perfect clones that net-boot (like in a cluster) where they just have to change one machine and issue a command to fix the rest. No one could administer 1000 different servers effectivly.

  • Stability means less work for sysadmins (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KaiKaitheKai ( 531398 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:25PM (#5016173) Homepage
    I have a linux web/mail server running for a local non-profit organization of which the exectutive director is a friend of the family. Their website is very small, and doesn't need to be updated often. It gets about 100 hits a month.
    I have had that server running for over 5 months now, and I haven't needed to physically visit the server in 4 months. That was because of a power outage; not even Linux is more powerful than God :) If they need the page to be updated, they send me the new text, and I update it via SSH.
    The point I'm trying to make here is that this nonprofit has no IT department, no sysadmins. They are mainly 50 year old ladies who are smart enough to not ask what the difference between RAM and hard drives. They have a low cost webserver running, which is freeloading on a broadband connection they already have. They don't touch the server, which lies in the corner of an empty supply closet.
    • I completely agree with this. I have a small box sitting in one of the rooms in my house serving MP3s. It just sits there, and all the computers in the house get their MP3s over the LAN. I've had it doing this for a few months, and the fact is if I didn't physically SEE it once in a while, I'd forget it was there. I never have to touch the thing. Even with things like the power going out (which happens semi-often around here, unfortunatly), my little server is to the point where it just boots right back up and works again. The last time I actually had to touch it was because the RTC battery died so when the computer was reset one day, it didn't come back up because the BIOS lost all it's settings, not Linux's fault by any means. A new battery and it worked again.

      I have used windows boxes in the past, but Linux just seems to work better. I can use Samba for my Windows boxes, and I use NFS for other *NIXes. But the fact of the matter is Windows just doesn't like not having a video card, or a keyboard. It doesn't always come up after a power outage. And you can't remotely administer them nearly as easily as you can with Linux.

      Like I said at the start, I find this is perfectly correct. I have forgotten about my little server for WEEKS on end, it's just that transparent for me.

  • Good news?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:26PM (#5016179) Homepage Journal
    Let's see... The article states that Linux/Unix admins USUALLY do cost more, but now they don't due to the tech slump. In other words, the TCO is lower because of all the out of work admins drove down salaries. Therefore, more sophisticated Linux/Unix admins are getting screwed.

    Now answer the question, "Aren't you happy to hear Linux is now cheaper?"

  • Apples vs Oranges (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shrinkwrap ( 160744 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:26PM (#5016181)
    You can't compare Linux TCO with Windows TCO, because Windows doesn't have one. You don't own anything with windows. Windows TCO is a myth and should be called Windows TCL - Total Cost of licenseship.
    • TCO means total, which includes down time, admin time, install time, admin/user training time, related hardware needed to deploy and licenses.

      Not to mention books, travel to conferences, meetings to obtain buy-in, aspirin, caffine and therapy.
    • Oh, so where can I BUY and OWN my own copy of Linux, then? Ownership implies that you can do whatever you want with a product. I don't know of a version of Linux that you can bundle up and package and resell without including the source. By the very definition of ownership, you also DO NOT own Linux.
      • Think of it as owning a book. You buy a book, you own the book. You can set fire to it, cut it up into individual sentences and rearrange it for humorous results, use the pages to wipe up fruit juice spills, sell it on eBay, or use it in a papier mache project.

        But you don't own the ideas that the book conveys. Someone else has copyright over it. You cannot republish it, claim it as your own work, or write a sequel using the characters from the book (parodies excluded).

        As a previous poster pointed out, there are also things you cannot do with it because the acts themselves are illegal.

        When you download Linux, you own the software. You own the source. What you do not own is the copyright. If you accept the GPL, the copyright holder authorizes you to distribute the source under those terms. If you reject the GPL, you have the sort of rights that the owner of a book has.

        If this is counterintuitive, it's only because Linux is distributed in a format that makes redistribution easy, while a book is not.

  • I've said this before.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:29PM (#5016194)
    It is because Linux admins, although slightly more expensive,

    I've said this before but, while the above statement is frequently bandied about, I do not see evidence of this in the real world. Indeed the majority of job postings that I see for Linux sysadmins offer salaries that are a fair bit less than similar positions looking for MCSEs.

    Indeed, there are also several commonly used salary surveys on the net that seem to indicate that Linux sysadmins are paid less than their Windows counterparts. I've even seen a few stupid cases where positions requiring Linux experence and an MCSE certification actually paid less than similar positions requiring an MCSE only.

    Is this only the case in my region or is it the case on a wider scale?
  • almost any problem you run into with Linux can be solved via google in minutes.

  • *ahem* there ARE windows admins that are capable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rooked_One ( 591287 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:33PM (#5016212) Journal
    and i'm sure that if you compared windows to linux, with one admin, with equal skills in their area of expertise, it would be a different story. This could be justa lot of fluff that /.'er love, but it could be true. I'm not saying it is, but what I am saying is this articlue probably took in mind the typical windows *idiot* admin. I've worked with many in my time.

  • Where it saves money (Score:2, Insightful)

    by perotbot ( 632237 )
    Is in the "utility" services; DNS, DHCP, Authentication, File Shares, WWW, Proxy and Mail (Unless your work uses Exchange). The services in a medium or small company can be run on one box as opposed to M$ software that has components that interfere with each other. Need a test server? a decent pc will do. Need a secondary DNS/DHCP source for a remote office? Something small setup here and shipped there with the "hook it up/turn it on instructions. That's where the saving are. I'd go as far as client server, but most of the ones that float past me are "MS SQL vXXXX" required. Like the commercial says, you can replace most of a datacenter with a rack full of linux, but can you replace a rack 'o linux with a rack 'o M$? doubtful and expensive..
  • what about from an overall business standpoint? it may be cheaper to administer, but what about other considerations...

    certainly there are more applications, etc, available to run on microsoft platforms then on *nix platforms...and since there are many more options for the microsoft platforms, it's easier to find one with all the options you want...how do you quantify this difference...

    also, while i know some businesses have switched and do use *nix platforms, i'm willing to bet the vast majority of companies (especially non-hi-tech companies that still use computers) are microsoft users...therefore, the unofficial standard for most things is gonna be microsfot's format...unfair, i agree, but the truth more often then not...that's why everyone uses .doc word processing documents, and .xls spreadsheet files, etc...what's gonna happen when a client sends your a power point presentation, and you're sitting there with your *nix box...

    obviously there are *nix alternatives to most of those windows things, but again, they're usually not as robust (er, i mean not as many features, because they're generally more robust in terms of not crashing)...

    in any case, they may be cheaper in an overall "cost to administor" sense, but overall there are unquantifiable things that need to be considered...

    note: obviously i'm a microsoft user, although i do have experience at past companies (and college) using both Unix & Linux...so, don't slam me saying i have *no* idea about them...i admit i'm no expert, but still...
  • RFG's study, "Total Cost of Ownership for Linux Web Servers in the Enterprise," compares the TCO of Linux to Solaris and Windows. Robinson compared the cost of "processing units"--the number of servers that would be required to process 100,000 hits per day, and tracked the costs over three years. Linux supporter IBM commissioned the RFG research for the study paper.

    Robinson compared Red Hat Linux 7.3 running Apache to Solaris running Apache, and to Windows running IIS. The comparison was all on x86 architecture, using a relatively small sample of 14 companies running mission-critical Web servers. The study found that Windows needed an average of 7.6 servers for a processing unit, Linux needed 7.4, and Solaris needed 2.2.

    My Windows boxes require 0.5 servers for a "processing unit". This article is bullshit. Normally, I wouldn't take into account anecodtal evidence, but their results are so completely out of whack, I just have to call bullshit. Being off a bit is one thing, but being off by a multiple of 15 is another.

    • I think what needs to be clarified (which the article does not explain) is what a "processing unit" really is. Is it 100,000 static (non-changing) pages, 100,000 fully database-driven dynamic pages where each page needs a dozen SQL queries, or somewhere in-between? Let's not even start counting how many images a page may or may not have, their sizes, etc.

      Ideally, the study itself has that information. But all we have here is a derived article lacking it.

      TCO is always a murky thing to calculate. While it is obviously desirable to purchase something that costs less, errors always seem to sneak into TCO calculations that make them meaningless.

  • Same w/Macintosh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:40PM (#5016245)
    ...last stat I heard was one MS admin for every 15 boxes and one Mac admin for every 150 ~ 300 boxes. It's called TCO, and one of the reasons a Mercedes can be less expensive over the vehicle's lifetime.

  • Point 3 is most important (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gsfprez ( 27403 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:48PM (#5016283)
    If it ain't broke, don't fix it - according to the article.

    And that is the problem with Windows. By the time i had gotten most of my servers to NT4, they were shoving Win2k down my throat. After i had gotten everyone onto Windows NT 4.0 workstation, i couldn't get it any more - i was forced to have W2k and NT4 Wkstn running side by side.

    Windows, unless you just refuse to be able to run certain software, requires you to change everything every 2 years. Its a nightmare.

    Mac OS X and FreeBSD wouldn't have required me to change so much stuff over the last two, years, and i don't see a big deal with the next few either.. while windows admins will HAVE to incorporate XP into the networks, because they will have no choice.

  • AHA! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ostiguy ( 63618 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:51PM (#5016299)
    A President of linux consultancy says that linux admins can handle more boxes than a windows admin.

    This study is stupid. As a rule, there are more windows admins than anything else, because that is what the market demands. As a result, there are more $30-40k deserving windows admins who would get their hands full with a lot of boxes. Still, if you need admins for a 100,000 hit a day web site (which doesn't sound all that high to me), you need to hire people who can roll out identical, customized machines in short time, have experience monitoring, and can batch updates, etc. You can hire a bunch of cheaper admins, who will install hotfixes one at a time, rebooting each time, or you can hire one or two good admins who can qchain em together, and reboot when all are installed. TCO is as much a function of management and hr's hiring skill as it is or anything else.

    ostiguy

    • Re:AHA! (Score:3, Informative)

      by NerveGas ( 168686 )

      Wow. You're talking about a lot of admins. I handle the functions of systems administrator and network engineer alone for a site that does 2,500,000+ hits per day. If I had to do it with Windows, I'd be swamped. Because I choose reliable hardware and Linux, it doesn't take a lot of time at all.

      steve
    • Still, if you need admins for a 100,000 hit a day web site (which doesn't sound all that high to me), you need to hire people who can roll out identical, customized machines in short time, have experience monitoring, and can batch updates, etc.

      Huh? Maybe something magical happens around 100,000 hits. Our webserver does 50,000+ dynamic pages per day. It's just one server (Win2k). Doesn't need much maintenance.
    • If I'm getting 100,000 hits a day, I don't want you to reboot all my web servers at once - that's a 5 minute downtime for the site.

      Experience counts for a lot in a sysadmin, whatever the OS.

  • Empire-building (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DGolden ( 17848 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @07:59PM (#5016336) Homepage Journal
    Oen thing to note: the "less staff required" can often count against things in "managerial empire-building with lots of petty political power struggles" environments, which are unfortunately very common. Telling a manager "you'll need less staff" is not necessarily the best route to his heart, they might even take it as a threat.

    No, that's not a healthy corporate culture. But in big companies and semi-states (a mainly european phenomenon where state-owned companies kinda-sorta privatise), it is a common one.

  • Did we forget to factor in the time spent in writing your own drivers and coding just to get your widget to work on Linux? Put that to an hourly rate and then compare costs, especially considering Linux is far from user friendly to all but the more knowlegable sects of the PC community.

    Besides... You actually paid for Windows?

  • Ignore TCO, go for flexibility and freedom (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Paul Johnson ( 33553 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @08:19PM (#5016431) Homepage
    TCO arguments are pretty much a waste of time. The answer depends a lot on the assumptions you make about the future (e.g. cost of Linux sysadmins vs Windows licenses in a few years). The real killer argument for OSS in business is freedom: the freedom to run your business the way you want to, rather than the way the vendor wants you to.

    • Freedom from surprise audits (and associated fees)
    • Freedom to change your support supplier, or even do support in-house if you want to. With closed-source software, if you don't like the quality and level of support offered by the vendor (or their authorised suppliers), you can lump it.
    • Freedom to carry on using an obsolete version because you don't want to upgrade. I've seen projects doing intensive development on top of a database for which support had been withdrawn by the vendor. Not fun, and a major risk factor for big projects. Particularly when the obsolete binary also ties you to obsolete hardware.
    • Freedom for your staff to install a new copy without having to get a purchase order authorised.
    • Freedom from having to track all those proof-of-purchase pieces of paper.

    "Always in motion is the future" said Yoda. Decisions need to be "future-proofed". That needs flexibility. If you have room to manouver then you can react to the unexpected. Open source gives you that room to manouver.

    Paul.

  • FYI, at one of the cited studies that stated that Linux's TCO was lower was sponsored byRedHat, another by IBM.

    "It depends" seems to mean "It depends on who's sponsoring the study."

  • Money Isn't The Object (Score:4, Informative)

    by ONOIML8 ( 23262 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @08:28PM (#5016466) Homepage
    This is all fine and dandy but money isn't the object. It's about what you want to do and how you want to do it. If *nix does what you want and Windows doesn't then the choice is made for you. If they both do what you want but your people are more comfortable doing it in Windows then that's what you go with.

    I'm not saying that money isn't a factor at all. Sure it is. But if money was the main factor in the decision for a company, and I were a stockholder in that company, I would be very concerned. If they were switching from Windows to *nix based on cost, I would have to wonder if their eye was really on the end goal.

    In my case I operate a public safety system, a 911 dispatch center. Our radio consoles and recording system all use Windows NT and 2K. We KNOW it would be cheaper to use *nix. We KNOW the system would be more reliable. Our CAD system runs AIX and sets a great example to prove the point. All that doesn't matter one single bit. Why? First off it's propriatary equipment and only runs on Windows so we cant change it. Second we couldn't justify the down time for the change and operator training.

    It's not about price or TCO. If that's what starts to drive the *nix community then they will lose big time. Focus on doing a job, doing it well, and making it a pleasure to do the job. That will win customers/users in the end, not price.

    This comming from a man know by family and friends as a tightwad.

  • From the submission:

    ZDNet is running a story on what a lot of us already know: Linux IS cheaper than Windows.

    When a study is done that says Windows has a lower TCO, it's bashed as being obviously flawed because of this very attitude. We just know that Linux MUST be cheaper. But when a study is done that shows the opposite is true, it's hailed has obvious.

  • There are now four kinds of non truths. Lies, damn lies, benchmarks, and Windows versus Linux arguments.

  • tco is irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @09:08PM (#5016697)
    in many organizations, especially government, lower expenditures are bad. my guess is that this holds true for many private corps too. i'm a teacher. every year my school is alotted X number of dollars for service Y. guess what happens at the end of the year to all unspent dollars. it goes back to the district. and next year, we get 95% X to spend. it is in our "best interest" to spend it all, and then some. in fact, our prinicpal has her dept. chairs come up with last minute lists months in advance, so that she can spend it before we lose it. does this suck? completely. so, anything that lowers costs will be looked upon as bad.

    our district is a novell network. i have heard novell is a pretty good choice, but apparently, they screwed the pooch pretty badly. our win98 clients run dog slow, and need tons of maintenance. we have many problems, alot that just linger. so what do they do, hire technicians for every school. but guess what, ditrict level tech dept. gets bigger budget, tech admin has more stroke. you think he cares? no. he has no concern for costs. we have literally hundreds of old P120/32MB boxes, many purchased just to qualify for technology funds from the state. (don't get me started on that one!!)

    i proposed turning some into X clients. hell, all the kids do is access internet type a paper or two. maybe put together a powerpoint show ( i teach 7th grade). of course the boxes go totally unused. in fact, 20 take up an entire lab. a complete f***in waste. i spoke to the district tech admin, showed him all that it can do, running X remotely from my classroom no less. he was shocked all i needed was $3K for a dual xeon server. he said no, primarily because he wouldn't control it. we would spend school funds, and we'd run it.

    remember, that tco doesn't matter if you're not spending your money, and you have to spend it all.

  • agrees with my experience (Score:3, Insightful)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @09:45PM (#5016867)
    I have adminstered Windows and Linux machines myself (college, grad school, and as part of my job), and I have seen support costs of support organizations.

    Windows administration is enormously labor intensive, even if you set up everything the way Microsoft recommends you do. Windows administration (and Windows programming, for that matter) reminds me of the recent thread on games Everquest and the Virtual Skinner Box [nickyee.com]: you get the feeling that Windows tools are structured to dole out rewards to keep you playing, even if your skill level is pretty low. It's no accident that so many dialog boxes say things like "Congratulations, you have just..."; some accomplishment--to stick a CD in the drive and enter a serial number. The goal, after all, is to keep people buying and recommending your product; if it doesn't work effectively for them, that's OK as long as the customers don't notice and feel good about it.

    As a result, "certified" Windows sys admins feel really good about what they are doing--they get a sense of accomplishment. But a skilled UNIX or Linux sys admin can often accomplish with a couple of commands in seconds what it takes the Windows admins hours to do.

    Unlike Windows, Linux won't try to make you feel good or give you a pleasant user experience. It won't encourage you or compliment you. It's just a professional tool, and at that it's quite effective. What it will let you do is, given the same workload, spend more time on the beach (or posting on Slashdot, as the case may be :-).

  • All these studies... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dackroyd ( 468778 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @09:57PM (#5016920) Homepage
    seem to ignore the costs of upgrading. They always assume that you buy your fixed number of computers and then operate them for a fixed task over a period of time. They never seem to take into account that later on you may want to add more capacity to your computer system. Or you may be forced into upgrading your software, which may require new hardware or OS.

    For example:

    If for instance if your deploying any machines with Windows 2000 Server/Professional now, then you will only have two years and three months of mainstream support. What happens if there's a critical exploit discovered (or released) one week after that ? Tough, you should have upgraded your OS by now.

    Or how about if you developed and deployed an online conferencing systems with Windows Media encoder 7.1 just a year ago ? Well unless you want to be using unsupported software, your going to have to upgrade the software you developed to Windows Media Encoder 9 before the end of this year.

    And even if it's acceptable to your company to run unsupported software, it's going to become harder and harder to find legitimater copies of the software you need. For example Office 97 would suffice for my word processing needs, but Microsoft have stopped selling it, and most of the copies on sale now are illegitimate. How much would a Microsoft inspection cost your company ?

    Btw support lifetimes here:
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh; en-us;LifeWin [microsoft.com]

  • Not ONLY because it is free (Score:3, Insightful)

    by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Saturday January 04, 2003 @10:48PM (#5017139)
    IMHO, where the story submitter says "This not because it is free", it should read "This not only because it is free". Being free as in beer helps reducing costs you know (not to mention being free as in libre). Licensing costs do matter.

  • TCO ? Windows doesnt have one.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <bert AT slashdot DOT firenzee DOT com> on Saturday January 04, 2003 @11:13PM (#5017304) Homepage
    Taking that TCO stands for "Total Cost of OWNERSHIP" then this cant be applicable to windows, since you dont actually own a copy of windows that you buy, you merely have a revokeable license to use it.

  • You know, it's kind of true. (Score:3)

    by xrayspx ( 13127 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @12:07AM (#5017547) Homepage
    I'm a (primarily) Windows admin. I do agree that if you have an average guy, he'll be able to deal with fewer machines than your avg Linux admin. But the whole thing is scripting. Although I would NEVER want to deal with multiple hundreds of Windows machines by myself (which I know some Unix admins do), several dozen are easily managable.

    Windows can be scripted to an extent, while less malleable than Linux, you can still automate a lot of tasks. Is Jonny MCSE gonna do this? No. Neither is some dork who bought a book and got an RHCE.

    In the right environment, either system is easily managed and scripted (and even stable). But the number of "Windows Admins" drives down the price of us, therefore we have more men per machine.

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