A recent Gartner study (which unlike the Forrester one from this week was not commissioned by Microsoft) finds that while some businesses can save money by migrating desktop systems to Linux, others would do better to stick with Windows. Companies that have held off upgrading for quite some time and use a limited number of applications on the desktop may save money with Linux, but those that have already spent the time and effort to upgrade to recent Windows versions and those that depend on a wide range of apps should stay with Windows.
You mean this isn’t a black and white simplistic issue of Linux Good — MS Bad???
Wow..I’ve been reading the wrong websites.
Software Companies should learn to develop multiplatform solutions. Like Java of wxWindows for C++.
Developing software for one platform only is not so smart.
makes sense to me
i coulden’t justify everyone using linux desktops in my workplace. Simply because of the lack of software. We run a couple OSX boxes too and it seems to work well.
i wish someone very rich would buy our adobe and release the source code for photoshop under GPL then i think the linux desktop bandwagon will gain MUCH NEEDED speed
the recent use of akemai by M$ should be all the explanation needed that linux is cheaper.the additional virus protection/firewall software needed to be PURCHASED
for M$ to work on the internet must be added to the cost
of a M$ upgrade.
Remember, this study was of Linux use on the desktop. Microsoft’s use of Akamai servers is 100% non-applicable.
Every OS, Application, etc. has it’s advantages and disadvantages. For me as a developer an open source operating system that’s based on the GNU development toolkit is extremely cheap and will always be cheaper for me to use to develop the software I work on. I don’t have $1200 sitting around to hand to Microsoft just so I can have an optimizing C/C++ compiler (which is the most retarded thing I’ve ever seen, they sell the C/C++ stuff alone in a ‘standard’ edition and then strip out all the compiler optimizer options!).
I think just the opposite is true (at least for developer’s workstations). If you are using a few applications, then the TCO may be closer, but when most Linux distributions come with a program or utility to do just about anything any developer would need to do, it’s hard to say that Windows may be cheaper.
For example, if you have a small office of 10 developers, you will be paying between $80.00 and $100.00 for Windows per seat, around $1,000 dollars per seat for either Borland’s or Microsoft’s development tools (I think the cost for these is actually higher), $20.00 per seat for a decent DIFF tool (since MS and Borland’s suck), a couple hundred for Office, etc. That all adds up.
Now, if I installed a stable Linux distro, say Debian, I get all that for the cost of a CD-R or floppy disk; depending on how I want to install.
Perhaps graphic artist shops and letter crunchers are in a different boat, but in my field, the cost difference is night and day in favor of Linux. The other plus is Linux doesn’t tend to chug along using 100% of the CPU just trying to keep a web browser open (my current Windows issue, which is why I’m reading OSNews right now — still waiting on a Windows reboot).
“Developing software for one platform only is not so smart. ”
And how do you know ? How do you know the exact economical and time-constraint context of every project in every companies ? You obviously have no experience on real projects in the real world.
I think the report is accurate in the way it is presented, but the main point Garter is trying to push (and OSNews as well according to their headline) is that Linux may not be cheaper than Windows; which really isn’t true.
If you consider it in the light that Garter is putting their article in (you just upgraded all your machines to XP and all the latest software) then perhaps it is not in your best interest to turn around and throw that investment away and install Linux. That WOULD be expensive. However, if you are a company who is considering Linux as an upgrade path (meaning you are looking at upgrading anyway), there is no way that you are in this situation. To suggest so is irresponsible.
Another point I’d like to make is that the concept of looking at the applications you are using and seeing if there are comparable ones in any alternative OS choice, be it Linux or not, is a necessary step. If companies didn’t do that, we’d still be using Novell on the server (or perhaps still be using mainframes) and DOS or CP/M (or worse). It’s not a negative towards the cost of any OS, but just a matter of course when a change is made.
I believe that a switch from Windows to Linux would be difficult for an existing organization, and of course they would need to evaluate that and see if the switch gains them what they want (whether it be a financial gain or the simple satisfaction of doing something for spite). This would be the case if they were going to switch from Windows to OS X as well. It’s not a profound revelation Gartner pulled from their collective armpits, but a well-known step in the evolution of a company’s infrastructure.
So in a nutshell, a migration of any kind within a company is hard and has associative costs. In a new installation I think Linux (and other open source operating systems) beat Windows on cost hands down. That’s kind of what the Gart report is saying, but in a very convoluted way.
And how do you know ? How do you know the exact economical and time-constraint context of every project in every companies ? You obviously have no experience on real projects in the real world.
It is just conjecture I would assume, but what’s wrong with that?
In my opinion, if somebody were to create a Photoshop-like, Photoshop quality piece of software for Linux, Windows, and Mac, a lot of people would use it. Most of the time, when somebody is stating a reason for not using Linux, it is because Photoshop doesn’t run under Linux. If this excuse was eliminated, I think many people would like to give Linux a try.
Personally, I use both Windows and Linux. I recently bought some financial software from Appgen. Why? Because it runs on Linux, Windows and Mac. I could have bought Quicken or Money, but neither of them support all the platforms. I also bought a commercial code editor recently. I chose Visual SlickEdit over the popular CodeWright for the same reason. I would be willing to bet there are others in the world who think the same way.
Notice that they report doesn’t mention the cost of recovering from a virus. One contaminated floppy from an internal network user and all bets are off. The endless patching is also not talked about.
Sure there are apps that are windows only, I have some, but other than that the average worker/user would greatly benefit from a secure OS. So would internal networks and network admins.
I have direct knowledge of several windows networks under heavy use and the support staff never sleeps.
Every OS, Application, etc. has it’s advantages and disadvantages. For me as a developer an open source operating system that’s based on the GNU development toolkit is extremely cheap and will always be cheaper for me to use to develop the software I work on. I don’t have $1200 sitting around to hand to Microsoft just so I can have an optimizing C/C++ compiler (which is the most retarded thing I’ve ever seen, they sell the C/C++ stuff alone in a ‘standard’ edition and then strip out all the compiler optimizer options!).
Why don’t you compile with Intel compiler – it much better than VC++ (which itself is amazing). Intel’s compiler runs on most platforms …
It is a reasonable analysis. Its doe omit to point out that any company now who is considering upgrading its desktops – would be mad not to carry out a Linux evaluation and pilot study. If only that they can let it it slip to their MS salesman and get big discounts if they do stay with MS.
Another factor for large organizations is what their IT infrastructure is. If it is primarily a Sun shop they could consider going to Mad Hatter now. If however the have their clients on a Novell network they might be better of waiting to se if Novell comes up with a complete Linux solutions package combining Netware on Linux with a Ximian based desktop as a result of their Ximian acquisition.
For a company with a strong IBM orientation waiting to see if IBM comes up with an implementation of its “On Demand Workplace” which being essentially cross platform could prove advantageous to a company wishing to retain a heterogeneous environment or to do a slow long phased introduction.
And of course there is the fact the stronger the Unix/Linux background of its IT shop the easier it will be to implement.
How do you say that the Intel compiler is better? Once again, this is like saying ‘Linux is better’ – such a statement can only be make within a narrow context. For example, I like boost – so Microsoft and gcc are the compilers for me. See http://boost.sourceforge.net/regression-logs/ to show why. If you don’t use such heavily templated libraries, you can use Intel, which does seem to produce faster, tighter code.
I know this is off topic, but it illustrates how hard it is to make a blanket statement about what is ‘better’.
//I have direct knowledge of several windows networks under heavy use and the support staff never sleeps.//
But they do have jobs, don’t they? Unlike so many “linux experts” I know.
linux tco is much higher than that of ms. why? system administrators are expensive. if u have a small linux network, chances are u will still have to hire a system admin to make sure everything keeps running. with windows, that is not the case. u can get away without a sysadmin on a small network. figure $15/hr * 8 hours a day * 20 days a month * 12 months a year, that’s $30,000/yr! the cost of MS software is much less than that, therefore u have lower TCO, therefore MS is cheaper, because they make easy to administrate software. this was done through years of work on automating administration tasks in windows, so I doubt linux will get that level of user friendliness any time soon.
“linux tco is much higher than that of ms. why? system administrators are expensive. if u have a small linux network, chances are u will still have to hire a system admin to make sure everything keeps running. with windows, that is not the case. u can get away without a sysadmin on a small network.”
No if a someone is considering changing a small network to Linux it almost certainly means someone in the organization has a strong Linux background and will be capable of handling it. It the same as with Windows you get away without hiring an MCSE as sysadmin because someone in the organization is good with computers and knows how to run a samll Win network.
Linux is easy when you know how – a lot of MCSE’s feel threatened because they don’t. With distros like Mandrake setting up and administering a small network is as easy as with Windows and can all be done through a GUI if you want.
It was harder in the days of say Red Hat 6 then you really did have to know what you were doing.
system administrators are expensive.
I don’t know about you, but every organization I’ve worked in pay less for Administrators than Developers. You suggest not using an Adminstrator for a small Windows network. Are you implying that you need one for the Linux network?
I don’t understand that. Several weeks ago, the owner of an outsource Admin company in Florida wrote that his company was losing money because the Linux networks are stable and don’t require baby sitting. As the Linux networks were replacing the Windows networks, his companies income was dropping.
I have yet to see a network environment where you can do without administration, regardless of the operating systems in use (Windows, OS/2, Linux, AIX, …).
Can you please reference the study you are basing these figures on?
But just remember, kids … it’s more secure than Windows.
To begin : I will speak for desktop(since it’s what we talk about here). So :
– most Linux are free to get. To install too. But the time to learn it, is it free too? Most user are NOT going to learn it at home… So at first there’s some learning.
– little network don’t need a really high security. Simple rules can be learned, and that for both Linux and Windows.
– about the patch… You never patch your distro? Remember : for deskstop!
– Not every deskstop need Office, Visual Studio and things like that
– Cross platform application : really cool… if the application have the same perf on each platform or nearly
– Photoshop and other graphical application : the problem here is hard, it’s not just the application. Lack of trusted driver is a real problem, and more the latence in X under high stress is more a problem. (2D case, how will Linux react with a graphical apps who take 2,5go of ram just for paint stroke? Maybe the 2.6 serie will help.)
– The lack of standard between all distro hurt. We all know it…
So it’s about all. It evolve each day, but for now I prefer to use Linux as a my server/firewall and use Windows/MacOS X as deskstop
Um, there are lots of companies doing very high end graphics work on Linux. ILM has all their artists on Linux machines running Softimage. There are companies that do major movie effects editing using Cinepaint. There are companies that use Shake on Linux to do compositing. Linux/XFree is a very powerful (and fast!) platform for graphics. Just because stupid little window-twiddling benchmarks can be laggy on some Linux machines doesn’t mean that the system is slow!
I’m using Intel’s 7.1 compiler on Linux right now with Boost. I have yet to hit a major compilation issue, even with BLL and Phoenix. According to the regression tests, GCC comes in at 98%, Intel C++ an 96%. Not that much of a difference, for practical work.
“linux tco is much higher than that of ms. why? system administrators are expensive. if u have a small linux network, chances are u will still have to hire a system admin to make sure everything keeps running. with windows, that is not the case. u can get away without a sysadmin on a small network.”
However did you come to the idea that Window can be just set up and left to run without a major administration effort. I now work at a small non-profit that thought that for about a year. It has taken me the last six months to fix the mess (I can write pages about what I found here at the start). It takes a lot of continuing work to keep a Windows network running passably well. Now the Linux machines I have set up in the past for other businesses once setup – will often stay that way for months and even years with only a once a month one or two hour visit by me or some other tech.
I have noticed that Linux shops are more likely to have a greater percentage of computing device per number of employees. That many of these are stripped down limited use machines set for a single job that take little or no training to use. Window shops have only full functioning computers that require both more computer savvy & time to use. Fact is many small companies useing as little as 10 to 15 work stations should pay a professional to maintain there system – and stop using the employees that were hired to do other work to do computer maintance. Chances are not only would their system work better but overall cost would be lower in the long run.
Companies that get low cost computing from Linux are those are willing to change the way they do computing because the flexibility that Linux comes with will allow solutions that are often much lower cost than the old models. The other thing that come from this flexibility is the ability to move with changing markets more easily.
I think Gartner makes some good points.
Gartner speaks about the lack of Linux desktop support among hardware vendors. Anti-Microsoft types see a conspiracy by Microsoft to force vendors to keep Linux off the desktop. Less rabid people still see Microsoft working to keep Linux from being pre-loaded on a new PC. Gartner mentions a few instances where vendors offer Linux to meet a price point. Will this practice expand?
Garner mentions the difficulty to changing to Linux if one uses a broad range of software. I would put it differently: Changing over is a drag, even if you know what you are doing. Consider my situation. I am a Word Perfect user. Linux has a number of programs that do a decent job helping Word users switch. I stayed away from Word, and frankly, Linux has nothing that will touch the raw power, the breadth of capability, and the shear elegance of Word Perfect 10 (with service pack 3 installed). The closest thing is a commercial piece of software called TextMaker, but while I like it, It can’t come close.
On image editing (and I do a lot of it), CinePaint may well do the job for me. The pros will stick with Photoshop. Some day I may spend the time getting my scanners to work. They currently work fine under Windows 2000. Microsoft has finally tweaked 2000 to let me bring a scanner online without rebooting the system, just like in Windows 98. Hey, it works.
Oddly enough, I use Linux the most on my Laptop, despite the lack of an effective standby or hibernation mode. It’s a slow thing, a Transmeta based system with 384 meg. of RAM and a slow hard drive. I don’t play games on it. I read e-mail, browse the Web, maintain a schedule, and take notes, and do light image editing. I use Mozilla, Konqueror, KOrganizer, TextMaker, and CinePaint. These are first rate applications…
but I still run Windows 98 under Win4Lin for Word Perfect, and a slew of reference software unavailable on Linux. Oh, and I run Proxomitron over there, which my Linux browsers access.
I think I may get more aggressive in my moves to Linux. Consider what I do with my Windows 2000 systems. There have been weekly patches to fix truly nasty security holes. I keep the anti-virus software up to date, sometimes twice weekly. Since my kids run games, I scan the systems regularly for spyware. I run firewalls that block any attempt by Microsoft products (especially Internet Explorer) to call out.
Overall, Windows 2000 is a good, stable OS, but on even four systems, it is something of a drag to maintain. I get tons of Spam and viruses. On my Linux Laptop, I don’t worry much about them. The security flaws are certainly there, but I have monitored Bug Traq, and the flaws are simply not that profound. With Debian, I can keep up to date, not just with the OS, but with most of my applications, and I do so without wondering what Microsoft does with the data it collects.
Oh my god ! Linux is ready for some typical corporate desktops, where peple need only a browser, email client, terminal emulators (to access internal systems based on mainframes ou Unix) and an Office suite. All of these already exist in linux.
People at typical offices doesn’t need compilers for RAD, games and other stuff that home users like.
And with linux you can recycle old computers as X-terminals or text terminals. You doen’t need to buy a brand-new Pentium 4 HT with 512MB of RAM to your secretary use M$ Word and play solitaire…
Of course, there are some applications that doesn’t exist with same funcionality in linux. In that cases the Winblows or Apple solution is the ONLY solution and price don’t care…
Most of the time, when somebody is stating a reason for not using Linux, it is because Photoshop doesn’t run under Linux.
Actually, one can easily run Photoshop (and MSOffice, and Quicken, and Lotus Notes, etc…) on Linux using Codeweavers’ Crossover Office. On a modern machine (i.e. Pentium/Athlon above 800MHz with enough RAM) performance is excellent.
However, for non-print work, one should also consider The Gimp, especially the new version (1.3, a bit unstable, but much more user-friendly). I use it instead of PS whenever I need to do some quick image editing for the Web.
The CEO of Earnie Ball said exactly the contrary : he saved more than 80,000$ in licences and hardware. So who should we believe ? “Consultants” or people who have already the experience and real information about the change, mmmh ?
And how long before Gartner “experts” declare that Linux is good for business and they always supported that idea ?
This is wrong. If you work in the office (and it is the office market that holds the most market share) you use whatever OS your company tells you to. With modern GNOME/KDE, the interface conventions are familiar enough that the company need only put a FAQ and possibly a small switching guide on the homepage. One day you walk into the office and see a memo describing the switch to Linux, and little productivity is lost.
The situation, though, is different for every business. Definitely, the administrators need to know what they’re doing, and listening to the endless ramblings of prepubescent trolls and zealots is not a good way to do IT.
Alright, I look after about 7 servers and about 80 client seats. We are running Win2K Svr, and about 98% Win2K/XP Pro clients. Having spent all this time and money in the last 12 months, how is Linux going to save me money, (remembering I am fully licence complient).
Next our ERP/MRP system is WinNT based, of which 90% of all users need access to it, which means I still need Win licences for those 90% of users, (even if running Win4Lin).
So are you going to recommend to me to 1, ditch a product I have already bought and is working satisfactory for me, and 2, going to ditch our ERP/MRP system for something that will cost $100,000’s to reimplement, just to run Linux?
It just seems to me, that all these Linux/Win TCO articles all assume you have nothing to begin with, are starting from a clean slate. What about companies that have invested $$ in IT (be it either MS, Sun, SGI, HP/Compaq technology), say over the last 12-24 months.
“Having spent all this time and money in the last 12 months, how is Linux going to save me money, (remembering I am fully licence complient).”
It is the only way of Windows be cheaper than linux… paying for it before 🙂
Of course in this case a migration to linux is stupid but “fully licence complient” is exception, specially outside of USA…
Statement A: “I have direct knowledge of several windows networks under heavy use and the support staff never sleeps.”
Statement B:”I have direct knowledge of several UNIX networks under heavy use and the support staff never sleeps.”
Statement C:”I have direct knowledge of several networks under heavy use and the support staff never sleeps.”
The above statements are all true with statement C being the most accurate. There are a total of about 7 layers to a network, and at any given time one or more of them could get attacked be gremlins. That’s just the nature of the beast.
Having a poorly implemented network with an understaffed support section would contibute to that as well..
I would love to know what Gartner bases their “findings” on. Ok, let me put it in a real context. My father works for the NZ Army, in the Army they have a large deployment of Dell Optiplex Desktops, just you average, run of the mill Dell Desktops. Primary use for them? wordprocessing, email and contacts, a bit of spreadsheet work and a whole heap of presentations.
In this setup, the whole deployment could easily be replaced with a SuSE Enterprise Desktop at around $100 each, which would give them not only the ability to move to another Office suite but also allow them to continue to use their current software line up (Office 2000) using Crossover Office. Crossover Office works without any hitches with Office 2000, however, due to the bleeding edge nature of Office XP, there are occasional hick ups. Considering that most organisations have no deployed Office XP, the issue of buggy support is really a non-issue.
This is wrong. If you work in the office (and it is the office market that holds the most market share) you use whatever OS your company tells you to. With modern GNOME/KDE, the interface conventions are familiar enough that the company need only put a FAQ and possibly a small switching guide on the homepage. One day you walk into the office and see a memo describing the switch to Linux, and little productivity is lost.
I would personally deploy Linux with StarOffice 6, give each employee a book, software and help to install it on their home computer, and in 4 weeks expect them to be able to use all the features that they require in day to day work.
Believe me, when the unemployment rate is at the levels they are today and the employee if faced with either retraining or the boot, for some reason, I think they’d rather burn the midnight oil and learn how to use a new system.
Now, there will be three camps develop. The first will love it, they’re learning something new and exciting. They’ll be the most enthusiastic about it. The second group will be people who will simply learn it because they have to, they will make up the bulk of the employees and the third group will be the “I don’t want to learn anything new, this new way sucks!”, and IMHO, the sooner you find out who these people are, you fire them before their field of negativity contaminates the rest of the organisation.
About ILM and so on : all 2D graphical apps are not under Linux. Still MacOS(X) and Windows box. For compositing they do NOT use a Linux box, but Discreet/SGI box. You know, *flame, *inferno and so on. Most of the societies come to Linux because they are for a long time Unix(Irix in this case) and it’s easier for them to port their apps and learn to their artist how to use the system. Most of their admin look at MacOS X, and I do think with the arrival of the G5 some will change again.(Probably not ILM since XSI/S3D isn’t for now available on it, but most other CAN). One more things : most of these society relies on an established workflow with whatever application work is used if they can mix it with the other. Linux here is just use because a PC with quality component is a hell lot cheaper than a SGI and the migration is fast
For Photoshop under Linux, how does he react under heavy stress? Not little picture for website, but big huge work for print, matte painting and this kind of thing… where 4000*6000 is an all day fact, with lot of layer? Photoshop under Windows/MacOS X in native has some hard time… Under an emulated environment, do you really thing it can compete? Graphic user are NOT geek. I am not speaking about joe taking out mom from the photo… I speak about professional people, the one who really use Photoshop, Painter, Illustrator, Lightwave and so on… And yeah I know most big 3d apps work under Linux pretty fine. Work fine if you have the right video card. But still no Photoshop, Painter and so on
Integral Capital Management V, LLC. One of the largest investors in SCOX, is largly owned by msft. Integral Capital Management V, LLC – is also a huge investor in Gartner.
Follow the money.
For Photoshop under Linux, how does he react under heavy stress? Not little picture for website, but big huge work for print, matte painting and this kind of thing… where 4000*6000 is an all day fact, with lot of layer? Photoshop under Windows/MacOS X in native has some hard time… Under an emulated environment, do you really thing it can compete?
WINE is not a emulator: it is an API translation layer, and as such there is not real impact on performance, just a slight impact on UI responsiveness. So what matters is not whether or not you’re running it native or through WINE, but whether you have enough RAM and CPU power. So if you have a hard time native, you’ll have an equally hard time – and similary if your machine handles it well under Windows, it will handle it similarly well under Linux. Hey, if it’s good enough for Disney, it’s good enough for me!
Graphic user are NOT geek. I am not speaking about joe taking out mom from the photo… I speak about professional people, the one who really use Photoshop, Painter, Illustrator, Lightwave and so on…
Disney isn’t professionnal enough for you? 🙂
As far as Discreet’s products are concerned, I have inside information (j’habite Montréal et j’ai des amis qui travaillent là -bas) that they are seriously considering porting all of their graphics program to Linux…which makes sense, considering SGI is shifting focus away from Irix and towards Linux.
… What they meant to say was “Linux on Desktop Not Necessarily Cheaper For Microsoft to Fund the anti-Linux FUD Spin Doctors”. Research showed that as companies switched to Linux, Microsoft’s revenue decreased. Since spin doctors and expert “third-party” reports are very expensive, and are not willing to take a decrease in pay to match the decrease in revenue, Microsoft is finding that Linux Desktops are not cheap to FUD away.
Microsoft, of course, denies the use of spin doctor’s and their role in expert “third-party” reports. Microsoft claims to be telling only the truth based on strict empiracle research, such as “if Windows were replaced by Linux, civilization as we know it will simply cease to exist.”
😉