Excelent article on Linux vs. WIndows 2000

[Dru Lee Parsec]

http://www.robval.com/linux/desktop/index.asp

Hope you enjoy it.

[Lem Sip]

It's a pretty good article and the M$ licensing has been huge problem for many IT managers.

For a comparison my last upgrade involved the following:

75 users from Win9X to 2000
MS Office 97 to Office 2K
13 NT 4 servers to Win2K
SQL 6.5 to SQL 2K
Exchange 5.5 Exchange 2K

Clustering for two servers running SQL and Exchange
Clustering for 4 Web IIS hosting machines
Hardware for the above 2 options

Over half of my budget was spent on licensing from M$. One particular problem was the licensing of SQL as a web server. The licensing of SQL is per user that connects or an open license that was so rediculous we never considered it. We had a COM companant that did all of our SQL queries from the Internet and counted as one user but of course this is not what M$ envisiged and so for our less than 200 users that needed the functionality we had to pay the large (and IMHO excessive) fee :( Small web serving companies like the one I was working at that use this technology get the shaft big time because M$ couldn't decide what to charge us. The M$ licensing dude we dealt with in New Zealand (I live in the US now) wouldn't/couldn't figure out what the charge should be and M$ US didn't get back to him (so he says) for weeks.

We were stuck with M$ from the start pretty much and for a company with less than 100 employees the fees were completely unreasonable because M$'s licensing structure counted people that surf the web site as users.

What the article never really covered though was the amount of support that is completely unavailable or just plain hard to find for Linux.

You can ring any networking company to come fix Windows but when you need support for Linux the options become so small that you are almost 100% dependant on the people that originally installed it to be around. Considering that StarOffice needs to be updated as often as M$ Office formats change then there is a definite support plan that needs to be considered.

However, if companies are sure they will have the technical support, either with staff or through contractors then this is definitely the way to go.

Just my $.02

Lem

[Dru Lee Parsec]

Considering that StarOffice needs to be updated as often as M$ Office formats change then there is a definite support plan that needs to be considered.


But if the M$ Office file format changes then you have to upgrade M$Office as well. Same amount of effort. But you know that M$ will charge you a LOT more for that new piece of software.


However, if companies are sure they will have the technical support, either with staff or through contractors then this is definitely the way to go.


This site is an awesome reference for tech support. Plus, I just read a humourous article where the author compared the helpfulness and cost of M$ tech support with the Psychic Friends network. Neither were able to help on any of 3 problems but the Psychic Friends were a lot cheaper.

So take the whole "tech support" issue with a grain of salt. I mean, when I have M$ issues I don't call them, I go to our network administrator and he fixes it. If the company's SysAdmin is Linux smart then they have exactly the same situation as if they were running M$ products.

BTW, I'm not disagreeing, I also think that M$ is WAY overpriced with their licenses. I'm just trying to clarify some issues.