The war is over and Linux won

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The title of this post is taken from the title of an article from the Dana Blankenhorn Open Source blog on ZDNet. The following is an excerpt from that article.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Read it and weep, Linux haters....

 

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you certainly do seem to have a bee in your bonnet regarding windows and linux. Personally i see them as akin to a hammer and a spanner you would use one or the other depending on your requirements.

Ill tell you now that i dont ever see windows going under, for servers, or for OS. it has advantages that the others just dont. for a start its a small selection of distinct OS's, all supported by a single central body. furthermore you dont have to have a degree in quantum physics to get around the system. ive played with several versions of linux over the years and ive never found a single one intuitive and easy to use. now ill be the first to admit that if i devote the time and energy to learning a particular distro of linux then ill become proficient in where things are and how to achieve what i want, but thats ONE distro. so i cant help support friends, etc on linux unless they are using the exact same distro as myself. the server world wont be any different surely? if you have to relearn how to write every time you move jobs theres going to be a whole lot less career development for a start.

I also dont like that i have to go round the houses and trawl for hours on forums, etc trying to find the answer to my problem. yes i have to do that on occassion for windows, but i find its less frequent.

take ubuntu for instance. i installed it on a machine using a USB network connection. understandably i thought, well its unlikely ill be able to use the internet with this OS until i hook up the network cable. fair enough i thought. no, it turns out that ubuntu demands, out of the box, that you have a network connection and, whilst you can load it, you have to fight your way through error messages. Theres a fix, if you trawl the net long enough, and it requires you to edit some file somewhere, but thats not the point. why isnt it intelligent enough to say 'no network connection? ah well its not important, ill function fine without it'. windows does. hell even some of the scripts I write have some form of redundancy built in. its not difficult, yet it didnt do it.

im not expecting no learning curve for linux, but i do want some degree of intuitiveness. hell i found it an uphill struggle just changing the GUI to Gnome. im in IT and it annoys the hell out of me, so why are normal users going to bother with it? not to mention large companies who want accountability and support, not someone telling them to post it on their forum for others to suggest answers to.

 

I havent read the article yet - but ill tell you whats happened and whats going to happen to freddy - everyone is going to tell him how much he hates windows and would he should stop - please dont! Freddy mate ill give it a read later and ill tell the world now i too see linux more on server in the future - and im seriously looking into learning them as well cause back in Cyprus because linux is open source i.e. free its going to be huge there!

 

Linux will only become popular when it's as easy to use as Windows is; once that happens Freddy will be bangin' on bout something else to beat Linux...

 

Well at home I have a Server 2003 network with 6 pc's, IP Cop firewall, and one machine running Kubuntu, only because I prefer KDE over Gnome.

Both OS's have things the other just won't do.

Now at work we have a rather large Server 2003 network with about 5000 users. We have a combination of NT and Unix servers for customers to host their websites on. During a meeting last month we were all in a rather festive mood and I asked if there were ever plans to move toward a Linux network. I was told that was a possibility under 2 conditions:

(1) The Windows OS became too expensive (which is happening if you've been reading anything about Vista)

and

(2) If M$ discontinued the perks we have for being the highest certified partner status, whatever that is. I don't know all the details but apparently we get a lot of stuff from them either free or at an extremely reduced rate/price.

So I guess it all depends on WHAT companies were asked in this poll.

 

Um, Linux has won the "war" because more people are expecting to be supporting *new* systems (note not existing systems) running Linux than Windows. Well if that isn't the most overblown, overhyped attempt at massaging figures, I don't know what is. Firstly, even if more new Linux systems get installed next year, Windows will still outnumber Linux by ten to one. Secondly, could it be no one has got any new Windows systems planned for the forseeable future because they're waiting for Longhorn?

Seriously Freddy, get over it mate. I used to support your rage against the MS machine, but you seem to be turning this into some kind of crusade. Where are the Linux haters? No one ever posts here saying how shite Linux is and how unethical Red Hat's actions are (and by the way, you want to talk about overpricing, I've been looking at the prices they charge for support lately and that is unethical). Most people don't even see this Linux-Windows thing as a war. I don't see Heinz and HP as being involved in some kind of baked beans war, only that they are two competing products, both with advantages over the other. Yes MS want to drive Linux into the ground because they are a competitor, but I don't know of many Windows users who are rapidly anti-Linux, how many Linux users are rapidly anti-Windows? Well I can name one for a start.

[EDIT] Who wants to bet that Freddy's next post will begin "You just don't get it go you..." [EDIT]

 

Easy does it, friends. Freddy's tone in this isn't as scathing as it appears. On the surface, it looks a bit childish, but take into consideration the smilies -- what's wrong with a friendly poke or two? I've known Freddy for years, and while he doesn't need *my* defense, I've seen his forwardness rub people the wrong way before. There is *no* reason why this can't be a friendly banter, since it usually ends up that some of us learn a bit more about the growth of Linux.

That said...

I love Linux, but hate the research and trawl (Fergal's spot on) that goes with every stinking thing that doesn't work. However, once you figure out the system structure, fixing problems gets easier. Navigation is sometimes the underwritten aggravation in Linux.

I love Windows, but hate some of the decisions that M$ makes. Plus, I hate the price, but I pay it because sometimes it's the best alternative. This is a crazy dichotomy, if only because these apples and oranges appear to be the same -- since they are both OSs. However, when one is free, and the other isn't, then the differences are great.

Will I ever run IIS? Nope, not with a LAMP setup so easy out of the box. Will I ever use Ubuntu as a daily desktop? Sure for web/email/surfing only. It falls short on almost every level, particularly if you're a gadget geek like me. Will it get better? Sure, since more devs are realizing the value of Linux. As such, we really need to help this along, since it only means good stuff for our future. The closer that Linux gets to Windows, the cheaper Windows will get, at least for a basic version.

Baba's correct in his assumption of Enterprise Linux solutions. It's gonna be years before there's enough trained Linux admins to fully support an organization. What's this mean? Enterprise support, and it ain't cheap. I often wonder why the Linux camp rails on Windows for their (understandable) angst towards M$ licensing, yet completely ignores their own enterprise solutions. Dumbfounding, really. Naturally, in an enterprise world, you'd be hard-pressed to find admins that run Linux distros -- it's mostly *nix like Solaris. Umm, that ain't cheap, either. Sure, companies have banks of Linux servers for clustering, or what-not, but it's extremely rare to see someone rely on them 100%. Like T_G said, they both have their own uses.

Right on the money, Fergal, which is why this is a subject that will always be around. Nobody will ever win this. That's the most ridiculous claim, even in tongue-in-cheek, because the competition will always be there, and that's the beauty of a world with choice. Decades later, and there's *still* Ford vs. Chevy debates, and decades further, there still will be.

 

Fair points Fortch. I don't have a problem with someone coming here and saying that they prefer Linux to Windows at all, what bothers me is the almost religous fervour that some approach it with. I mean rhetoric like "the war is over and Linux won", it sounds like something out a bad B-movie.

 

Can you give an example of this Geek?

I haven't come across this point.
I use SUSE and there always seems to be an alternative to programs used by MS. However, I did strike up an heated discussion on one of the other forums, that MS is easier to use than Linux Distro's. Also some people are under the illusion that office files in MS can't be transferred to Linux

thanks to crossover and emulators they can

 

LOL. I just had to laugh when I read this thread. I put the "Linux haters" on there as a facetious commentary on all the times I've been called a "Microsoft hater", but I see most people have a hard time understanding smilies and my sense of humor.... I guess a few people across the pond should be able to feel one of their legs being gently pulled....

The article isn't wrong about what it is talking about. If you will notice it is talking about application development and running applications off the servers. That's web-based applications folks.

There is a lot of evidence that shows that Linux is by far a much more economical and efficient platform from which to run web-based applications. First, the largest web-based application providers in the world run their applications on Linux servers. Check out salesforce.com and what Google is doing. Second, although I greatly dislike the trend, the computing industry is moving toward all applications being web-based. Third, it's been shown consistently that MS servers are used at about less than 50% capacity and the way to improve capacity is to add servers. Bank of America found that they can utilize their Linux servers at 75%+ of capacity with no slowdown in server response. They are currently in the middle of an $800,000,000 migration to Linux because of the savings. Fourth, large web-based applications with many users will be run on clusters, and Linux clusters have proven their value again and again.

Do you guys really think MS is using its 3E approach on Novell because Linux is not hurting them big time in server department? Do you think Oracle is announcing their own Linux distribution because it's a "loss leader"?

As to Linux not being "intuitive". Well, I find such a statement from people who very rarely use Linux, or have very little experience with it, to have very little credibility. First, just how intuitive was Windows when you first sat down at a Windows machine? Were you able to administer it "intuitively" from day one, or did you have a considerable learning curve with many things just didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense? That was my Windows experience....

Did/do I have a learning curve in Linux? Yes. I wouldn't expect anything different. Linux isn't Windows. It's different from the ground up. So why would I expect it to do everything exactly the same way Windows does? That's what I would call a very unreasonable expectation. However, the more I learn about Linux the more logical it becomes, and more intuitive, to the point where I am beginning to find Windows systems to be cobbled together and not intutive at all.

What's "intuitve" to people is what they are familiar with, not what they haven't seen. You give me two people of equal ability who have never used a computer in their lives, place one on a Windows system and the other on a Linux system and each will find the system they first learned on to be more "intuitive" when they first make the switch the other OS.

Linux is altogether a different logic because Linux is based on a different philosophy than Windows is. Windows is based on the philosophy that you have a locked system which MS owns and you rent certain privileges. Linux logic is based upon a philosophy that says you own your own system and you have the right to modify any and all features of the system if you so desire. Which system will be more flexible? Which system can be made to fit your own needs rather than what someone else has determined that you should get? Which system will require you to know more to fully take advantage of the capabilities open to you? The closed system with few privileges or the open system in which you are granted full control?

 

seriously im tired of threads like this going down the well!

 

Agreed. Windows doesn't suck, Linux doesn't suck.

Let's leave it that and move on fer chrissakes!

 

Freddy, you have a wicked sense of humour - I mean 'wicked' in the old fashioned and modern day meanings

 

LOL. Yeah, it's sort of like the guy who got mad at me for one my jokes years ago.

With a straight face I told him about my experience in the grocery store: How some little old lady came up to me and told me how much she thought I looked like her grandson had been killed in a car wreck and asked me if I'd wave and say bye Grandma when she left. So, being the good guy I am I agreed only to find out when I got through the checkout counter she had said her "grandson" was paying for her groceries.

I'd then say I ran outside and caught her getting into her car, grabbed her leg and started pulling on it just like I'm pulling yours. The guy get really torqued at me because I'd had him going all through the story and when I got to the end he realized the joke was on him.....

 

Please disregard this post as I was drunk and in a bad mood.

 

That old boring debate!

Why is there this "war" between the two operating systems it is irrelavent. What good professional IT people should be doing is listening to their customers and recommending what best suits their needs. For some it will be Windows for others it will be UNIX/Linix for many it will be a mix of both.

There are somethings the UNIX/Linix is better at and somethings Windows is. Some organisations can run a pure Windows domain others can't get to grips with UNIX/Linix.

I've been in IT almost 30 years so have seen both operating systems mature and to be honest they NEED each other in order to develope and give benifit to all.

 

Well they are - and it has got a bit nasty.
From a personal point of view, my family has switched from Heinz to HP in the beans department. We find them richer. Heinz have recently changed their ages old recipe in order to combat the HP threat (not just because of me I hasten to add).

That's when I do some of my best posts.


Seriously though, it is all about consumer demand.
Boyce and I saw the EVO launch and it's all about making things that the consumer wants. Making routine tasks easier and the interface more user friendly.

Now, there are those who will come out of the shadows and make references to how some subroutine may keep a record of how much milk you bought from Tesco, or that there is a registry setting which stops you installing something that a competitor has made.

So what?

Do most users care?

Tell you what, if it was my business, I'd do it the way MS does. And I'd be rich.

I could do someting nice and open source which would make me a sub-culture hero, but I'd prefer rich to be honest.

 

shite! I missed that one!!

 

Well I've just read the article (in all of 1 minute) and all I can say is what a joke. An IBM sponsored study showing that Linux has 'won the war' is like trying to believe a Marlboro sponsored study that says that smoking is not dangerous.

In all honesty would anyone here (excluding freddy) really buy Linux?

As for a 'war' between MS and Linux, all I see are a bunch of Linux geeks with a holier than thou attitude jumping up and down trying to convince people that Linux is better by slagging off about MS.