The War Is Over, and Linux Has Won 593
xtaski writes "Dana Blankenhorn bluntly states a reality that many have known: 'The war is over and Linux won'. With Oracle and Microsoft putting Linux in the spotlight and positioning themselves to grow with Linux. 'A new report shows that 83% of companies expect to support new workloads on Linux against 23% for Windows. ... Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite.'"
Pearl Harbor (Score:5, Insightful)
At best, Linux has won an opening skirmish. For most people, the internet is what runs on their desktop ( or laptop ). They have no more concern about the particulars of the server that their router connects to than they do about the particulars of the powerplant that their power cord connects to. They neither know nor care about server software
At worst, it is like the Japanese general ( admiral? ) who is alleged to have said after Pearl Harbor: "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant." MS is obviously taking Linux seriously now, but most people still don't know what it is. Expect MS to engage in serious Linux FUD.
Anyway, congratulations to all the Linux coders.
Slashdot missed the memo (Score:4, Insightful)
But than again, it's becoming an old song: 'Haven't they heard we've won the war, what do they keep on fighting for?'
Organic Foods? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm happy there are more linux servers. And once it becomes a viable desktop solution for a normal user, it'll be a boon for its security. As it is now, it's not a flexible, easy to manage, easy to use desktop OS. But keep trying!
Triumphalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
There will be multiple "wars". Pearl Harbor (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, there are multiple market segments.
#1. The server segment. Linux looks to have this market locked up.
#2. The corporate/government desktop market. Pay attention to how Munich progresses. This is the next big market for Linux.
#3. The home (non-gamer) market. This isn't going to happen until you can buy Linux pre-loaded from the major OEM's. And that's not going to happen until Linux has the marketshare with the corporations/governments.
#4. Finally, the gamer market. This depends almost entirely upon the support of the hardware OEM's and game ISV's. If the newest video card doesn't come with Linux drivers, the gamers will buy the video card and run the OS that does have drivers. Look for this market to be the very, very last one that Linux will gain marketshare in.
Don't worry about whether Linux is taking over the gamer machines yet. Focus on getting Linux into corporation/government desktops. That will get the OEM's to start pre-loading it which will set the stage for the home user migration.
Server side vs. Client side (Score:3, Insightful)
On the desktop, the best Product is MAC OS X, with both Windows and Linux running distant second. For some reason desktop customers do not seem to care about usability too much. But what the hell, OS X is pretty close to Linux anyways, with regard to what software runns.
But if Linux is the server OS of the future, it means it will stay and grow. Desktop OSes can be changed pretty fast. Server OSes cannot. MS allways wanted to dominate the server market. Guess they just never managed to create a good enough product. Or have long enough product lifetimes.
My personal reason for running Linux and not OS X is that I wanted a workstation OS (read Unix-like OS) longe before OS X came along. Windows? Well, most games only run on Windows. Any other reason to use it? I don't see any. It is not even cheaper or easier to use if you know what you are doing...
As Gandh once said... (Score:3, Insightful)
1991-96
"...then they laugh at you..."
1997-2000
"...then they attack you..."
2001-06
"...then you win."
2007?
(all years are approximate)
The "war" is far from over (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux may win a war versus Microsoft on the server, but that is not where Microsoft is most powerful. Microsoft is still the 800 pound king gorilla of the desktop, and Linux still has a way to go before it unseats Microsoft. Heck, OS X has been out for over five years. Many users who have used both OS X and Windows claim that OS X is superior, and many have switched. However, OS X has barely pinched Microsoft, and Microsoft still enjoys 93% or so marketshare on the desktop (5% goes to Mac, and the rest of that is Linux, BSD, and other OSes).
The reason why Windows still hasn't been unseated is that too many people have software that is Windows-only. Businesses still rely on in-house Windows programs that were created by some programmer many years ago who is long gone, and cannot afford porting it to another operating system. Sometimes you'll see a business run an old Windows 3.1 or even DOS application since there is no replacement, and since it is good enough for them to not worry about porting it or creating a clone of it. Engineers aren't dropping AutoCAD anytime soon, and AutoCAD is Windows only. Engineers, being well known for their pragmatism, stick to Windows. Graphics artists on both the PC and the Macintosh who rely on Photoshop, Quark Express, and Dreamweaver are not going to move to Ubuntu and use the GIMP, Scribus, and nvu (yes, those open source products are good, but their commercial competitors are very good and are worth the $$$ that you pay for them; they end up saving you $$$ with their features and ease of use). And developers who want some food on their table better know something about Win32, .NET, and other Windows technologies. In most non-CS fields, you cannot avoid Windows in the professional world, and Windows has became a fact of life in many careers.
So, what is the open source community going to do about this? A great operating system with all of the bells and whistles isn't enough for most people. Once again, OS X is considered the best operating system by many people, but some applications haven't been ported yet (or won't be ported), which doesn't leave OS X as an option for those people. The open source community needs to start polishing up their offerings and get started on some new stuff (an AutoCAD replacement will get engineers off of Windows, for example). GIMP can use some improvement. OpenOffice should be more modular and faster. Dia needs to start looking like OmniGraffle or Visio. There needs to be some sort of OSS equivalent to Visual Basic (what I mean by that is ease of developing GUI applications). I recommend the same with other Linux applications.
Remember, the key to operating system adoption is applications. Look at MS-DOS, for example (back in its heyday). It was hard to use (compared to the Apple Macintosh at the time), very rudimentary (compared to other OSes in the 80s like Unix, NeXTSTEP, and VMS), and can only run one application at a time. But it ran Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, and it ran all of the other applications that business users wanted. Home users wanted the computers that business users had, so they got that too. Ditto for Windows 3.1. NeXTSTEP knocks the socks off of Windows 3.1. But who had the applications?
Your OS can be the easiest to use OS in the world. It can have microkernels with the best scheduling and load-balancing algorithms that exist. It can utilize all of the systems research published in the ACM and IEEE journals within the past two years. It can be so secure that it would be the envy of Homeland Security and would make Symantec and McAffe angry (they can't sell protection for it). It can even have a mass advertising campaign with beautiful angelic models praising the product. But if it cannot run the applications that they want, then it is just a waste of hard drive space and time as far as they are concerned.
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:5, Insightful)
#1 Server segment - Linux needs to interoperate with Microsoft before it can fully tackle the enterprise administration server market. Active Directory and Outlook are the 2 major players for Microsoft here, Linux needs to be compatible or companies will not fully make the switch. As you said, the desktop comes after the server market, so in order for the server market to succeed, all of those corporate desktops need to work with linux servers.
#2 Corporate/government desktop market - It will be a huge help if Munich succeeds. Applications are the key here, specifically office applications. Open Office is great, but it still has a long way to go in some areas before I would feel comfortable doing away with MSOffice entirely. A working Powerpoint replacement is a must, as is a fully featured Excel replacement. Writer is relatively solid for most uses. Open formats will be a key contributer to advances in office applications.
#3 The home (non-gamer) market - The only reason this will not happen before the corporate/government market is because the OEMs have much to gain by ignoring linux and a lot to lose by embracing it as long as MS has enough market dominance to throw their weight around. A solid web-browser, a decent office application, and a usable movie/music player are all that is truly needed by this market - and they all already exist. The only thing stopping is the OEMs not pre-loading linux in favor of MS.
#4 the gamer market - You hit the nail on the head on this one. Drivers Drivers Drivers. If #3 succeeds, game makers will naturally focus more on their linux customers, but only if they have compatible hardware.
Unfortunately most of us slashdotters want to jump straight to #3-4. That simply isn't going to happen until microsoft's influence is already weakened from some other area such as corporate or government use of linux.
Red vs. Blue (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft: I'm no stranger to sarcasm sir.
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is winning this war, and will continue to win it.
You stupid imature gits... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There will be multiple "wars".Pearl Harbor (Score:4, Insightful)
However I see no game companies going to develop Linux game after Linux game. After all games are a market where money makes the decisions, and Linux users are used to have software but not pay for it.
(Having said that ugly generalization, I believe I'm just going to install Heavy Gear 2 for Linux as I really like that game and the Windows version doesn't work in my XP)
Nobody "won" anything. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The truth isn't that FOSS has won... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'd call any business with a market cap of 287 billion dollars a failure. Wish I could fail that way.
Re:Free software has won. (Score:5, Insightful)
And as far as who prefers which operating system I think you're also mistaken. I'm stuck hacking away at a bash prompt for a very large chunk of my day five days a week trying to deploy servers while maintaining other servers. I do not prefer Linux for home use as it doesn't offer me anything more than Windows or Mac OSX (except maybe security in the case of Windows). I personally have a Windows machine for gaming and a Powerbook laptop for just general dicking around.
In either case I think you've grossly over generalized a lot of people.
It's not the marketshare, but hardware drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
To my mind, the war will be won when computer equipment manufacturers make their hardware available for Linux as much as they do for the market leader. I want to be able to buy the latest and greatest LCD projector mouse with built-in Wifi webcam, and not have to worry about whether some poor hacker in some corner of the world has worked all the bugs out of his loadable module. I want the manufacturer to provide the driver, and list requirements like: "Windows Vista, OS X v23.6, or Linux kernel 2.6.72" and have a CD that lets me use the thing.
All those people on either side of the debate, who say, "Why should we dumb down our geek OS for the average Joe?" or "Let's crush Microsoft under our heel!" --well, this is my goal for Linux winning. I don't care if Linux has 0.1% marketshare --if I can use it, and anyone else who wants to can use it, that's all I need.
As Linus says, we're not out to crush Microsoft. That's just a side effect.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but ease of install is a major non-issue.
First of all, most Linux distros are already easier to install than Windows, and after a recent eXPerience with a laptop with a SATA drive, which Win XP SP1 can't even see, and the laptop, of course, doesn't have a floppy drive - which is, as we all know, the only way one can load external drivers during a Windows install - well, even Gentoo is easier to install than Windows. At least it sees the disk.
Furthermore, common users do not install their OS anyway. It comes pre-installed or they get one of us geeks to do it for them.
Although, it may be so that Microsoft Quality(TM) accustomed users to a regular OS reinstall... can't say, really...
Superior features are also a non-issue; people just want to use the same programs in the same manner, for they do not want to learn new stuff.
This wasn't meant as a critique; it is not their area of interest, and they mostly just want to use the computer, not program it or learn anything beyond the few basic functions they need and which they have already mastered to the level they need.
Think speed-reading vs. normal reading and how many people bother learning that.
this can't be serious (Score:4, Insightful)
MS is now just starting to dabble in Linux's foothold, affordable HPC computing. Lets be honest here, the lack of MS support is what gave linux the biggest door into the server market in the first place. Do you guys honestly think that Longhorn server is going to loose MS market share? Since Windows NT 3.51 MS has consistently put out server software that was significantly superior to the previous version, and MANY people are pretty happy with 2003.
Or do any of you think they are going to start losing server share to Apple? I mean I won't even talk about how apple xserve share is hardly measureable in the server world...
All that aside, here is my real question; Why is this an acceptable post? Regardless of your side, nobody really believes the "war" is over and "linux has won". Isn't this the definition of "trolling"? Why is ok to troll when its anti-ms? Its bad enough people troll in the a thread, but to start a new thread by trolling? What the he**?
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, how I wish this were true.... But it's not.
Every day, dozens of servers are deployed running Microsoft Exchange. These servers spread through data centers like a plague, leaving behind Active Directories and MS SQL Server databases. Users start using the non-interoperable features of the windows server and it causes DHCP, DNS, and eventually FTP and Web servers to go to windows 'because it's easier'. Somewhere in there a CIO, who only knows about software with a multi-million dollar marketing budget, figures out that it is cheaper to buy a bulk license than to buy individual Microsoft licenses. His trade magazine said he would get audited if he didn't anyway. Then the administrators are forced to use the products for every task to maximize ROI, while the CIO walks around the office spouting inaccuracies about Linux, like it's "famous inability to handle timezones" and other such trash, in order to seem smart. Before you know, while there may be a couple of Linux boxes in the company, for the first time ever Windows Server is dominating every rack in these companies datacenters where there user to be commercial UNIX. Linux's main role? Providing a stable kernel for the virtual machines that allow Microsoft multiple license fees for a single piece of hardware.
You just can't compete with that marketing budget. Not when people with no technical knowledge make the purchasing decisions. Not only is Microsoft encouraging you to buy their own products, but the thousands of other tech companies that bring in billions of dollars of revenue each year by selling products that make Microsoft's broken bloated trash usable are encouraging you to buy Microsoft so that you'll need their software to fix them. In 5 years, Microsoft will have the same stranglehold on the server market that they have on the desktop today. Ironically, they may blow the desktop market with Vista.
Re:There will be multiple "wars".Pearl Harbor (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think Linux games would be pirated more than Windows games?
Or, more precisely,do you think a Linux counterpart of a game would be more pirated than the Windows version?
I'm afraid that you're very much mistaken if you think that, and this is why I find this statement of yours misleading.
Yes, Linux users like the fact that their OS is free. But to many (not the most; I don't have such illusions) even more important is the fact that it's open.
Linux users - at least in my experience - aren't cheapskates; if they find a product worth their money, they'll buy it, hardware or software, no matter.
No-one at least bordering on normal won't refuse to buy a game although they'd really want to play it just because they believe in free software.
But whatever... I only know one thing about Linux and games:
Even some of my friends who don't like Linux and don't believe in it ever succeeding in anything but the tiny share it appears to have right now have Linux installed on their machines.
Old games work much better under Linux than under Windows XP. DOS games, Win9x games... you name it. There are many games which won't even run under WinXP, even in compatibility mode, but will run just fine under Wine or Cedega.
I know that not many people play ancient[1] games all that often, but it is a factor which could get people running Linux as their secondary OS - if only they knew about it.
[1] In game terms, anything older than "previous version" is ancient.
You're insane. (Score:1, Insightful)
There is NO COMPARISON between ANY Linux distro and Windows or Mac OSX. Linux is still very hands-on. It's a tinkerer's OS, not a user's OS. And I don't see anything that makes me think this is going to change.
Re: (Score:4, Insightful)
No one's a true winner (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of the limitations that you list here are based on the fact that companies don't see a profitable model out of Linux. If Linux becomes more popular and more and more people start using it, then companies will start investing in software designed for Linux. I'm sure that you already figured this out though. I also think that there is this business stigma against anything to do with 'open source', equating it to 'non profit'. But there are quite a few successful Linux business models out there, so really this bias is a bit misplaced.
Now, I'm probably going to upset a few friends of Linus when I say that this new Microsoft SuSE thing might help the 'image' of Linux a bit with the mainstream public, although it is already hurting it with the hardcore fans out there right now. Really, the major thing that Linux needs is support of the 'BIG' software companies. Heck, the only thing I see that is stopping me from switching is, for the most part, the lack of game support and this looming hardware conundrum. I say that 'cause getting my stuff to work in Windows is bad enough, I'm a bit weak in the knees when I think of getting it to work in Linux (although this is founded on what I heard on the internet, so it's probably not that).
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
What Linux can do and Windows cannot (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you mean at a desktop computer, because otherwise one could go endlessly about all the embedded uses of Linux. Considering applications, I would say both systems are pretty much equivalent these days, I can't think of any application in either Linux or Windows that doesn't have an equivalent in the other system. Wait, I mean other than viruses, of course, that seems to be a category of "applications" where Linux is still very much behind...
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name implies, is predominantly GUI oriented. A graphic interface is better for some jobs, a text interface is better for others, just like a spoon is better for eating soup and a fork is better for steak.
Try to automate any task in Windows, it's a real PITA. Programmers often end doing things through kludges like Excel macros for the lack of a good text-based interface. For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows? In VMS that would be a piece of cake, in a Unix system it's more complicated, for i in *.jpeg; do mv $i `echo $i | sed s/jpeg$/jpg/ - ` ; done or something like that would do it, but the easiest way to do it in Windows that I can think of would be a VB program.
Ironically, ease of installation, which is often cited by XP users as an advantage of Windows over Linux, seems to be one of the areas where Linux shines. I have created a standard system configuration script with twenty or so functions, one for each type of application. There are functions for DVD playing, scientific applications, office applications, graphics, development, electronic circuits design, etc. When I install a Linux system, I install the basic system and run my script, after uncommenting the function calls for the types of applications I want in that computer. Then it's just a matter of waiting until apt-get does its job. No need to insert CDs, no need to click anywhere, no need to run setup.exe, no need to mix and match all the *.DLL files each application expects.
I think both Linux and Windows have made progress in the last ten years, and one should always consider that. It's stupid to compare Kubuntu with Windows95, or XP with Yggdrasil Linux. But IMHO Linux has evolved much more, both because Windows was more mature ten years ago and because Linux has some intrinsic advantages. I think being an open and free system is an advantage in that people make it evolve towards what the users prefer, rather than what marketing decides. Another advantage is that Unix has an excellent basic conception. Windows evolved over DOS, a system whose basic conception was to make it run in the available hardware of 1981. The emphasis on GUI solutions, the lack of a good scripting system language, and the need to maintain compatibility with the DOS roots are limitations that make Windows inferior to Linux.
Re: Perl Harbour (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time windows vs. linux is mentioned people quote this thing like it was a rule of battle or something. It isn't. Sometimes they fight you and you lose.
Re:There will be multiple "wars".Pearl Harbor (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What Linux can do and Windows cannot (Score:3, Insightful)
I put my /home, /media and /games directories on a separate partition. I just had a major upgrade go horribly wrong after I failed to completely RTFM as I am prone to do with alcohol in my system late at night. Rather than muddle through fixing a non-booting system, I just reinstalled the OS. When I booted to the desktop, everything worked. All my settings were there, bookmarks, IM stuff, documents, all the games worked, etc. All I had to do was reinstall my media codecs and video drivers, and I had a full, working system, configured just as I had left off.
Last I knew, on windows, there is no easy way to keep user configs and programs on partitions separate from the OS. Oh, and in addition, when I last wiped and reinstalled the OS on this computer, I just copiedRe:What "war"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure about that? Assuming Windows XP still runs on i386/i486, those "subsystems" must be essentially the same as emulation. Not emulation of a chip, but emulation of an API ala Wine -- which as you know runs both Win16 and Win32 successfully under the same Linux kernel that runs both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux binaries.
So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
It isn't very easy to pick a capability that Linux can do that Windows can't because frankly an OS is just an OS and so long as both support Turing-complete languages in theory both can do exactly the same things. However, Linux DOES make it much easier to do all of the following "out of the box" on any modern distro. With Windows, many of these capabilities are possible but certainly not out of the box and in many cases require expensive third-party closed-source
software:
0. In a GUI, NOT get interrupted by some random popup dialog box while typing and have my next space/enter key cause who-knows-what to happen. This by itself is almost enough for me not to consider Windows ready for the desktop. Yes, there are registry settings that ALMOST fix the problem, but they still don't work 100% of the time.
1. Write programs in languages at all levels of abstraction that will run on any other Unix-like operating systems. Also, automate all routine aspects of the system via init scripts and cron.
2. Easily handle ALL of the standard network protocols as both client and server: SSH, SCP, FTP, SMTP, HTTP(S), IRC, IM, NFS, NTP,
3. Easily show the user the status of the system in a transparent manner. CPU usage, processes list, mounted disks, available memory, logged in users, login history, disk quota,
4. Easily handle multiple users in multiple security contexts. Need a root window? K -> System -> Root console. Need root access for specific tasks only? su or sudo
5. Allows full debugging of rare corner cases so the system can still run. Example 1: Linux can run safely on a system with a bad RAM chip with a kernel boot parameter telling it to avoid using the affected memory area. Example 2: A bad library that kills X11 on startup CAN be identified and worked around. Example 3: A kernel module that borks the system can be easily fixed not to load at startup. These are pretty serious conditions that usually have no solution when encountered in the Windows world.
6. Allows MUCH easier mixing-and-matching of major components than Windows. Example: Most software runs the same in 2.4.x kernels and 2.6.x kernels on the SAME system; in Windows, this would be equivalent to being able to dual-boot Win2k and WinXP and have them use the same registry and have the exact same programs in the start menu.
I prioritized this list in the order that matters to me as a Linux desktop user. I need the computer to obey my commands, not interrupt a command halfway through. I need programming languages that work well and can also work on the supercomputing clusters I do research on. I need things to be automated easily, so that for instance my home computer can automatically update an external web page after its IP address changes so that I can always find home no matter where I am. I need full network connectivity including SSH and SCP to reach those supercomputers and also transfer files to friends anywh
Re: (Score:4, Insightful)
To get ANY work done on Windows I have to first, spend $1000 or more upgrading the box (Visual Studio, MS Office, Antivirus, etc). Now, since most everything on the planet is written for a autoconf toolchain, I need cygwin... but at that point I'm being about as silly as installing a linux box just to run MS Office under wine... I should have installed Linux in the first place, so let's forgo that step.
OK, so what do we not have... SSH. Sucks to be me. Sure, I can TS... assuming of course I bought the upgraded licensed version of windows that can actually do that. I can run a webserver... assuming I bought the upgrades. I can run a SQL server... assuming I bought the upgraded OS capable of doing such. I can run apache/mysql, true... but the integration of those apps on the windows platform is abysmal... they were written for Linux and if I'm going to go to the trouble of installing and using them, well, same argument as cygwin.
Sure. on both platforms I can install out of the box and check email. I can do that on a palm pilot.. that's not an honest comparison. Windows *can* do anything Linux can do... by emulating Linux and doing a piss poor job of it. The reverse is rarely the case except with video games or the occasional specialty application which dwarfs the cost of the OS anyway and you are best off running a dedicated workstation running windows for said app.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Arbitrarily decide that it *might* not be licenced properly and shut itself off asking you to call a 1-800 number to get it back on again. I migrated an entire production server farm over to Linux after my high availability system went down this way. Any OS that will voluntarily sabotage itself when it is not running into technical problems has no business being in a production environment.