Comment Re:Linux not really "free"? (Score 1) 505
Merrill Lynch understands IT support. They would be foolish to displace M$ on the desktop at this state of Linux desktop development. Standards are a good thing, and Microsoft is a desktop standard. It is expensive, but not as expensive as supporting Linux on the desktop would be. I can see the first few calls to support now:
"Yes, Mary? I am going to e-mail you a tarball...What?...No, it's OK, you won't have to get your fingers dirty. Now upen up a shell...yes, that little thingy that looks like a TV. Now type tar -xzvf....What? No, that's xz...as in zebra...vf. Yes...that's right."
Linux ain't there yet on the desktop, and there is no compelling ROI in trying to put it there as yet. In fact it would likely hinder the work of many who have built spreadsheets, access databases, and much more using the M$ tools. The exception being those desktops that are using Solaris, or other Unixen. Linux does offer productivity and ROI benefits on those machines because chances are the people that use those know what to do with a tarball.
However, Linux definitely *is* there in the server arena. I just finished a server sizing estimate for a company who spent $350,000 on our software. The price of the HP-UX box they originally wanted to run it on was nearly $200,000. Just for fun, I worked up an estimate based on the HP lxr-8500 with 8 processors. It came in at around $62,000 for similar specs, running Linux. They chose the Linux option. This is happening much more than even a year ago, and with good reason. An IT manager can turn around to his director and easily demostrate the cost savings, with equal or better reliability/usability/supportability than the traditional Unix systems, with little if any retraining of the existing Unix admins.
"Yes, Mary? I am going to e-mail you a tarball...What?...No, it's OK, you won't have to get your fingers dirty. Now upen up a shell...yes, that little thingy that looks like a TV. Now type tar -xzvf....What? No, that's xz...as in zebra...vf. Yes...that's right."
Linux ain't there yet on the desktop, and there is no compelling ROI in trying to put it there as yet. In fact it would likely hinder the work of many who have built spreadsheets, access databases, and much more using the M$ tools. The exception being those desktops that are using Solaris, or other Unixen. Linux does offer productivity and ROI benefits on those machines because chances are the people that use those know what to do with a tarball.
However, Linux definitely *is* there in the server arena. I just finished a server sizing estimate for a company who spent $350,000 on our software. The price of the HP-UX box they originally wanted to run it on was nearly $200,000. Just for fun, I worked up an estimate based on the HP lxr-8500 with 8 processors. It came in at around $62,000 for similar specs, running Linux. They chose the Linux option. This is happening much more than even a year ago, and with good reason. An IT manager can turn around to his director and easily demostrate the cost savings, with equal or better reliability/usability/supportability than the traditional Unix systems, with little if any retraining of the existing Unix admins.
