Microsoft won't cut Windows price to beat Linux

Reuters via Forbes.com ^ | 10/9/02 | Caroline Humer

[B Knotts]

Your numbers are way, way off.

Linux TCO: Less Than Half The Cost of Windows

[KneelBeforeZod]

I spent no time cleaning up the bugbear virus on my microsoft machine. I just used free virus software from grisoft. Then again I also use the opera and OB1 browsers when need be. Most people aren't careful enough to avoid viruses. But most people are online for ages without getting one anyway.

[jimt]

The late model distibutions were Mandrake 8.2 and Red Hat, either 7.3 or 7.2, I'm not sure which.

Another peeve, while I'm crabbing, is the overall "installation". They give you time estimates that remind me of government project budgets: start out low and finish up many times higher. Red Hat's projection started out at 23 minutes and finished at 1 hour 26 minutes. There's just no excuse for that, especially as the "packages" to be installed are already known. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to write enough code to figure rough disk and processor system performance. These would be sufficient to give way more accurate times than the install program does.

At least they ought to be smart enough to start high and come down rather than vice versa.

I will admit my patience level and willingness to diddle with Linux has been low. But when my machine locks up solid as a rock, or has a screen image offset 3/8" up and to the left, or has the hard disk light flashing like a Las Vegas neon sign (when I'm doing nothing for minutes!), or produces illegible screen fonts, my patience level wears very thin.

The whole "user" and "security" thing bugs me all to heck as well. Gee, how did I ever get by running MS-DOS all those years while having "super user" privileges and no nanny system slapping my fingers for exceeding my authority? I tolerate some of that at work, as there are good business reasons not to let users run willy-nilly. But at home!!??

Sorry for the rant - you seem typical of Linux users: friendly, helpful and enthusiastic. I'm glad it's working well for you. But I when can't get it to run on a plain vanilla Toshiba laptop, noted for stability and compatibility, my enthusiasm wanes. BTW, I tried the Mandrake installation at least 5 times (variations on recommended & expert) and the Red Hat installation 3 times.

Please note that this was after getting MS-DOS 6.2, Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 triple booting independently in their own primary partitions under V-Comm's System Commander. All work perfectly, and all deal with my Selectbay floppy/zip drive/CDROM/hard disk swapping as though it was second nature, albeit with a bit of MS-DOS multi-config fiddling.

How the heck is it that both Mandrake and Red Hat can show a perfect 800 X 600 installation screen with NO configuration, but X-Windows hoses up 1024 X 768 while having system details down to the very chip level? Have the X-Windows chumps never heard of VESA, or is early '90's technology too far advanced?

Oops, pardon me, I'm frothing again. Thanks for your interest.

[chilepepper]

Yes, but you had to spend money to correct something that
should not have happened in the first place...

[chilepepper]

Or get the exact same eMachine at Computer Geeks and/or Computer Surplus Outlet for $250...

WITHOUT AN OPERATING SYSTEM!

[ikka]

I have been running Linux and OpenBSD on ALL of my servers and simply have not had the issues you mention.

My customer that is hosting his NT4 box on my network, had to manually change all the IIS settings - using the GUI. There was not a way to change the IP in one place and have it apply everywhere.

Under Apache, you change the IP address ONCE and all the virtual hosts pick up the change.

Concerning X Windows, it can truly be a pain, but then again, you don't run X windows on a server.

While all the MSFT apologists groan about Linux, I am running my entire company on it (save one WinME laptop) and I just do not have downtime.

[TechJunkYard]

.. LINUX will not defeat WINDOWS.

Look, not even Linus Torvalds thinks that Linux will topple Windows. Linux was meant to be an alternative, not a replacement. In that sense, Linux is doing very well by just being out there, since it introduces a standard of stability and reliability that Microsoft can only dream about. If Windows users didn't start demanding better performance you'd likely still be running NT.

I can buy a Dell for $800 bucks with Windows installed and spend zero on training. Or I could pay $200 for one with Linux and spend $1,000 on training.

Irrelevant. You can also spend thousands on Windows training and zero on learning Linux, since everything is available on the web or usenet. This is NOT rocket science and not all users are idiots, contrary to popular opinion.

The total cost of server software for 4 servers running Windows 2000 is about $12,000.00 including labor to install and maintain them for the first year.... And each year of its life thereafter the windows cost is about $3,000 for labor to maintain the servers...

What did you pull those numbers out of? Application and back-end software will cost you many times that... unless your servers are just going to be sitting around running Windows. Linux distributions typically include all of the apps you'll ever need, and if they dont, there are places where you can download what you need, usually for free.

So when you get down to it, you'll see that Linux + Guru costs less than Windows + Guru + Software Assurance + apps + app maintenance + (licenses * seats).

[jimt]

... Or for saavy users who are willing to spend the time to configure their boxes exactly the way they want them.

Hmmm, I like to think of myself as savvy, but ??

Lessee, I can program in X86 assembler. I wrote the programming we used to translate our company data from one ERP system to another after our consultant said it couldn't be done and advised hiring temporaries to fat finger in all the data.

Hey, I'm no Ralf Brown, by a long shot, but neither am I ignorant.

But Linux is NOT easy to configure. DOS looks very friendly by comparison, and it was the reason people switched to Windows and Plug-n-Play.

How come Linux can't handle simple video modes? You don't need to know chipset, horizontal and vertical synch rates, ad nauseum, to set video modes on a PC. Move one number to a register, call an interrupt, and you're off to the races. But not under X-Windows. They want more system detail than the long form census, and STILL hose up one of the most basic and critical aspects of a computer - operating the monitor.

That's utter silliness. In the desktop market against Microsoft, they're coming to a nuclear war armed with a pea-shooter.

[ikka]

How come Linux can't handle simple video modes? You don't need to know chipset, horizontal and vertical synch rates, ad nauseum, to set video modes on a PC. Move one number to a register, call an interrupt, and you're off to the races.

For one thing, you don't get accelerated video modes when you do it this way, which would make graphics much much slower. If it was as easy as you claim, why doesn't Windows use your method?

Second, X does more than just set up a video card. It has hooks for securely displaying remote applications on your screen, for handling geometry and color cube conversions, and has a pluggable architecture to let you add new functionality.

Third, I took an old RedHat distro and stuck it on a piece o'crap EMachines, running a Cyrix 333Mhz chip. The video card was detected and worked fine. Not everyone has problems getting stuff working.

Fourth, you can go to XIG.com and buy commercial X windows software for Linux that will fix all your problems and knock your eyes out with the speed. A Matrox card + Linux + XIG will blow away anything, even a highend HP or Sun workstation.

[Bush2000]

Hmmm, I like to think of myself as savvy, but ??

Waitasec, Jim. You misunderstood me. I wasn't saying that you weren't saavy. Emphasis on the "who are willing to spend the time to configure their boxes exactly the way they want them". Linux ISN'T easy to configure and maintain despite any claims to the contrary by its proponents.

[Bush2000]

Your numbers are way, way off.

So are yours, dude. The TCO numbers in that report don't include the costs of retraining and administration.

[Bush2000]

All lies all the time from Ballmer. Mr. FUD. Microsoft had 30 billion sitting in cash last time I looked. They are a very rich company but still feel compelled to lie.

Your side is constantly arguing that it's inevitable that MS will slide downhill in the face of a Linux onslaught. Now you want to argue the reverse... You can't have it both ways, dennis.

[Bush2000]

Irrelevant.

Of course you would say that. In your world, there are no retraining costs and users just migrate all their applications over without any problems whatsoever. Call Disney security: You're living in Fantasyland.

[KneelBeforeZod]

you had to spend money to correct something that should not have happened in the first place...

spend money? grisoft was free. and it didn't happen since...I had free software.

[jimt]

For one thing, you don't get accelerated video modes when you do it this way, which would make graphics much much slower. If it was as easy as you claim, why doesn't Windows use your method?

1) Because Windows has a raft of software fiddling with every possible aspect of screen writes, based on the "Windows uber alles" theory of application management. Granted, this is somewhat necessary in a preemptive multitasking environment. But they take it a ways farther.

Of course, Windows still has no trouble centering the screen (LCD display) or using standard video modes. Linux does.

2) My chipset has "accelerated video modes", but performance under Linux was not just slow, it was glacial. When it wasn't locking up my machine. I could key in pixel color values in hex nearly as fast.

After several hours of diddling with this (incompetent, amateur hour operating system - nyah, nyah!), I went back to DOS for some refreshing performance improvement. Decompress, combine 29 source files in order, write a 9.3 Mb file, delete source files: 4 seconds.

3) Using my old-timey 16 bit methods, I could rewrite the entire screen in 24 bit color over 100 times a second. Of course, that assumes both my antique hardware and no layers of Windows to wade through. But I really don't need much faster than that.

4) "Accelerated video modes" are merely more complex versions of what I was discussing. See this VIDEO MODE INTERRUPT LIST.

5) I'd expected "lean and mean" performance from Linux. I'd heard about how it could run just fine on a 386, etc. Yet it certainly seems much less lean and mean than Windows. I'm sure I could go out at buy a 533 Mhz bus machine with quad 2.8 Ghz processors, 4 gigs of video memory, etc., and get acceptable performance. But I can do that with Windows as well, even the totally bloated XP. So what?

6) I guess I was expecting a multitasking, "super DOS". I was very much wrong. It's an unfriendly '60's mainframe clone with a haphazardly glued on GUI.

[B Knotts]

You CANNOT assume that the administrators need retraining. There is a significant installed base, with existing admins.

[B Knotts]

And if you had actually read the study, you'd know that administration costs are included.

Linux, along with Solaris, also came out ahead of Windows in terms of administration costs, despite the fact that it's less expensive to hire Windows system administrators.

[jimt]

Linux ISN'T easy to configure and maintain despite any claims to the contrary by its proponents.

Thanks! I sure wasn't feeling too swift trying to install Mandrake for the 5th time, I can tell you ! It makes NT look very simple.

[TechJunkYard]

Did you read past that one word? You can spend whatever you like on things that one can get for free -- after all, Microsoft users ARE just revenue sources to you -- but don't blame Linux for that.

[jimt]

Don't confuse dislike for Linux with love for Microsoft. What the heck do you think got me to try four different distributions?

After seeing my wife's 1 Ghz machine with 128 Mb of memory run like a crippled 8088 with intermittent memory problems, I discovered bloatware XP was leaving 16 MB of physical memory free - with no programs running. The only thing I find "innovative" in XP is its ability to make your hardware appear obsolete as soon as you buy it, through its sluggish and unstable performance. In short, it sucks.