By Munir Kotadia, 17 March 2005 09:35
NEWS
Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights Cisco, Dell, EDS, EMC, Fuji Xerox, Microsoft and Sun.
The alliance comprises a group of IT hardware and software firms that have combined their expertise and products to help EDS create 'best of breed' solutions and compete with the likes of IBM Global Services and Hewlett-Packard for the most lucrative government and enterprise contracts.
It was first announced in the US during 2004 but senior executives from partner companies gathered in Sydney on Wednesday to officially launch the Alliance in Asia Pacific.
At the launch, Robb Rasmussen, vice president of EDS Global Alliances, explained that the alliance does not consider Linux to be a suitable operating system for the largest of enterprise customers because the open source operating system has issues with security, scalability and the possibility of forking.
"From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment. We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix - it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment," said Rasmussen.
Rasmussen said he was just as concerned about using Linux on mainframe computers.
"We are concerned about security on an open standard environment like that. We are also concerned about some of the scalability issues that we are seeing on our clients on a global basis. Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications - until [Sun's Scott] McNealy finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there. We think Linux has the possibility of going the same route," said Rasmussen.
Additionally, he said that Linux is not significantly cheaper than alternative operating systems.
"Quite honestly, in the notion of costs, as we look at what we are structuring with our alliance partners, we are not seeing a compelling cost advantage that would lend us towards Linux - given the other things I have mentioned," said Rasmussen.
Jim Hassell, managing director of Sun Microsystems Australia, argued that Linux was no loss to the Agility Alliance because it could use Solaris 10 instead of Linux rival Red Hat.
"If you test Red Hat against Solaris 10 against whatever elseÂ… we would say that Solaris 10 beats it hands down on functionality and everything else," said Hassell.
Munir Kotadia writes for ZDNet Australia.
Comments
There are 54 comments. Join the discussion
1. James D'Apice
So are they saying a Microsoft OS is secure enough?
Surely not.
I wonder what OS is used at Sumitomo Mitsui? (See the story at http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39128777,00.htm)
I guess it was Linux spyware.
2. anonymous
AAHAHAHAHAHAhaha!
"IT heavyweights"
*sniff*
3. Patrick Berry
We don't like bridges, as they can fail, catastrophically.
We have found that there are more bridges, than tunnels.
There could be more failures of Bridges, than tunnels.
You could "be sold" a bridge, by just about anyone.
You never heard "I've got a tunnel I could sell to you"
Signed,
Tunnel Building Cartel
4. anonymous
Hmmmm... Anyone see a bias here? Dell is under Microsoft's thumb. Linux poses a threat to Sun's OS. Perhaps it is worth researching what HP and IBM say in this matter.
5. anonymous
So IBM are not IT heavy weights. They are putting a lot of investment into running Linux on iSeries. I wonder what their view is. Is windows secure? Take a look on the Internet and see how many Trojan removal programs exist for windows, why is that do you think. The Sumitomo issue could quite easily have been an employee innocently opening an e-mail or web site that gave these people the back door.
6. anonymous
Another instance of self protectionism! If true why would Intel make such a large move to Linux (35,000 dekstops and servers and still rising).
7. anonymous
In a similar announcement, an alliance of oil barons declared alternative energy sources to be "wussy."
8. Jamie
An OS is only as secure as its administrator make it.
Unix, Windows and Linux can be highly secure and can be left wide open.
If the administration is good then so is the security.
As for Sumitomo Mitsui (http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39128777,00.htm) had they got their firewall set up correctly they wouldn't have had a problem.
9. anonymous
Microsoft OS secure?! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
10. Anthony Mellor
Now I'm convinced Linux is the way forward. All these companies are spending a lot of time and money putting it down which suggests they're scared of something. If Linux was no good these people wouldn't take the time to issue these kinds of statements.
11. anonymous
Linux 'not secure enough for enterprises'
...issues with security, scalability and the possibility of forking.
What's 'forking'?
12. Patrick Regnouf
It comes as no surprise that Linux be deeemed unsuitable by people who scarcely know what they are talking about. mixing up operating systems language (Linux in this article is reffered to as a "language").
and as this consortium does include Microsoft as well ... draw your own conclusions.
it is said that Solaris 10 would beat any other OS hands down, well show us the study ... I do not recall seeing any.
just a question to Munir: Are these people as stupid as you paint them or did you add to it just for fun?
13. anonymous
The worrying thing is that they think we're stupid enough to believe this crap.
14. Simon
Whilst some valid points are made, these points are equally valid against 'their own' offerings.
Yes, Linux could fork, and already is forked (note that Red Hat is leading the way in forking off an 'incompoatible with anything else' branch). But then, how many versions of Windows are there ? NT, 2000, 2000 SP(n), XP, XP SP1, XP SP2, 3000, 3000 SP(n), ....
Yes, there are scalability issues - but probably no more than most other OS's. Lets see now, how many big clusters were built with Windows, and how many with Linux ?
Security, well what's the MS track record on that - yep they're in a fine position to criticise others !
That really just leaves 'open source'. Well, yes, if you don't manage your systems, it would be possible for a third party to modify a package and get you to install it. But that is not a fundamental issue with open source, it's a management issue as to how you select packages for installation. If you stick to a 'big name' brand of Linux (eg Red Hat), and stick to packages which they have vetted, then there is probably little risk. On the other hand, if you go out and download utilities from the internet, without checking their content or provenance then you are asking for trouble - irrespective of OS.
So we have MS and Sun (vested interest in keeping other OSs out, Dell (big MS customer), EDS (looking for someone to blame for their next cock-up) slagging off Linux ? That is unsurprising. What is worrying is that some non-technical polititians are likely to believe them.
15. Cristian Nicola
Once again i'm surprized how little people do know about OS's and computer software generally.
First let's clarify one thing: computers are JUST a tool. Most of the people do forget this, as they forget that this particular tool has 2 components: "hardware" and "software".
There is a huge difference between using a hammer and using a whole team of builders to build the largest construction in the world. The hammer is much more precise.
I had been developing software for many years now and i've said it before: there is no way to compare linux with windows. The bigger the enterprise you talk about the larger the gap is.
First of all: between the linux version of december and the one of this month there are literally thousands of incompatibilities. Not to mention vulnerabilities and changes in the API (this is what programmers use to develop software). Applications developped for windows 3.x can still work in windows 2003.
Imagine in a corporation what it means to update 30000 machines because there is a vulnerability. Imagine what it means to re-build hundreds of software applications just because there is some "minor" flag change in the API.
The fact that windows is the most popular operating system and that the home users can use it while they do not understand the basic of securing your home pc is not the OS failure. It is like blaming the car insurance companies for identity theft.
And thats' just a small part of the things. The API of linux systems is far from perfect and it is far incomplete compared to windows.
I keep hearing linux is so great and so fast but i dare to ask: how many people had a linux desktop at home? how long have they been abled to run it? Do you really think linux does not crash or it doesnt have trojans?
If anyone has any questions about why windows is better than linux please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.
I'm NOT working for Microsoft and honestly i do not like the monopol position they're in.. but just show me a good alternative and i will gladly embrace it.
ps: yes i DO have linux machines running, and yes i DO develop for linux OS so yes i DO know what i'm talking about - and i dare to ask you: how comes that the places i worked in the past years never had any trojans? how comes they never had any viruses? If windows is such a bad OS why havent my computer at home been infected?
16. Cristian Nicola
ps: to the anonymous IT manager who thinks "we're stupid to believe this crap" i can only say we're stupid NOT to believe it - or we have no idea what is the differnece between an office with 1 computer and a 3 desk calculator and a very large corporation with thousands of servers/desktop and 10s or 100s of networks.
17. anonymous
Forking seems to mean that the product development could go off along several tracks. I assume they're referring to the opposite of "merging" which has cost us a fortune in switching from Digital to Compaq to HP and finally to Solaris (now no-one writes apps for HPTru64 any more) ... and reskilling people. Of course all the techies realise that for a given amount of money spent on a server linux is faster, easier to secure and easier to use generally. It (these days!) runs oracle (for instance) like a dream and sets up in half the time of one of those Unixes that doesn't include top/gnu tar/bash (if you don't know what they are, you've never really used unix) as default. Solaris is gone, HPUX too. Whether they merge with MS, each other or Apple remains to be seen, but they're hanging onto persuading managers to buy unmodernized products and sooner or later those managers will be replaced.
18. Iain Benger-Stevenson
If Solaris 10 compares favourably with Linux, it it free to Users? I bet there are whacking great licence fees!!
19. Simon Allen
Auote "... and the possibility of forking."
Question: "What's 'forking'?"
It mean that they think Linux will be too forking good?
20. anonymous
An opinion from Mr. Robb Rasmussen. He obviously discounts UNIX and Linux in favour of Sun.
It would be nice of Munir to offer a more balanced report - how many bilions of Linux business does the industry lightweight IBM expect to do?
21. Dom
Linux not secure not scalable, tell that to google and Amazone.
Give me a break.
Dom
22. Simon
So what do most ISP work on?
23. anonymous
There seems to be a lot of excitement over this article, but the position of the Alliance should not be a surprise to anyone. There is not a business alliance out there that is not self-serving. It is the job of the IT professional to separate the facts from the FUD.
In regard to Cristians comments, while a program written for Windows 3.1 may run on XP (in compatibility mode), unless it is very simple it most likely would not be able to be compiled with today's compilers. Microsoft's addition of .NET to Visual C++ required many applications to be changed in order to upgrade to the newer compiler.
Yes, APIs may change on Linux as they do on Windows. But, on both platforms if you stay with mainstream APIs, the changes are less frequent. Actually, on Linux if you were to develop an application using X/Motif and Posix APIs you would experience very little (if any) changes from linux version to linux version and could migrate easily to other flavors of Unix.
With every release of windows, devlopers of large scale applications are required to make changes, either to fix what no longer works the same or to make use of new features.
Look at the pain and problems that SP2 for XP caused. This was a 'service pack' release and broke many main stream applications.
At this time windows still provides a better desktop experience, but the difference is less than it used to be. As far as in the server space, its to close to call and continues change.
For me personally, I see the proprietary nature of Microsoft's solution to be their biggest problem. Even when they 'embrace' a standard, they seem incapable of sticking with it or at not interpreting their own way (some examples, TCP, html, java).
24. Cristian Nicola
DOM & Simon: as i've pointed in my second post both your questions show me that you have NO IDEA what a corporate network is.
Yes it may be that googles uses linux but do their NORMAL desktop computers they use inside their company is it linux? ISP may use linux on their servers but do they care if any of the ISP clients gets infected? or if he dumbly shares his own secret files?
Please try to find some serious "in context" arguments.. If you have had read my post carefully you would have noticed that i also use Linux for certain things, but the article was about large corporations.
Linux in large environment is simply not a solution.
25. Paul Tansom
In your comments Cristian Nicola makes some interesting points that I had to read twice to convince myself I had not read the wrong way round.
"Applications developped for windows 3.x can still work in windows 2003." - have you tried the practical application of this? How many applications were broken and needed rewrites when Windows XP was launched? Yes in theory and in some cases it will work, but things have changed drastically between those versions - and so you would expect!
I was in fact discussing this the other day with a developer who has had to write new DLLs to keep his voice control software working with his current version of Windows, but is now reaching the point where he needs access to the source code to continue - which obviously he doesn't have.
As for the comments on APIs in Linux, well yes, the Windows API has moved on significantly too, but I can't think of one instance of a Linux application I have needed to use where I haven't been able to continue using it following an upgrade - on Windows I can. I have several pieces of Windows software I would have liked to continue using but without purchasing an upgrade I can't. There are obviously applications under Linux (and any OS for that matter) that are old and have old dependencies that are no longer met in the current version - at least with Linux I would be able to sort those out and get things working if I wanted (assuming a new version of the application isn't freely available already).
Any OS can be made secure by a good administrator, but a Linux or Unix administrator has a much better starting point and array of tools to hand to do this than Windows. Security, like networking, was considered from the beginnning, not added on later. Microsoft are suffering a good deal of baggage from their roots in DOS and non-networked machines that they are gradually shaking off (by breaking compatibilty with older software over time).
I use Linux on the desktop at home and at work and have for several years. I currently support Linux on the desktop and server as well as Windows (which I have been working with longer). I should really be advocating Windows as much as possible because it is more profitable in terms of needing support - but I value my customers and want them to have the most reliable systems possible :)
I'd be fascinated to hear why you think Windows is better, but I'll not email the first address that comes up on Google for your name. I can be found at Gmail by joining my names with a dot, although you'd not get the wrong person by using Google either.
For me Linux is more than a good alternative to Windows. Going back to Windows would hamper my productivity significantly. Every application type I need is available for Linux so I have no problems there, and the desktop experience is orders of magnitude better for my usage. On the server side there is no contest - a minimal customised install runs far better than Windows and doesn't leave me with an unnecessary GUI, a browser with frequent security holes and updates to gaming code needing installing because it is built into the graphics system!
26. james child
To Cristian Nicola
I can't believe if you are a professional developer you said that. Its laughable that you think that the APIs change etc... How come on my linux boxes I can get things to run no matter when they have been compiled. How come the up time on my Linux boxes is 100% when I haven't turned them off.
How complete do you know the API for windows is when you can't get to the windows source - if you are such a good programmer then you don't need the API and can get closer to the machine.
Its faster and more reliable because you can get closer to the hardware without a cloud of unknown and buggy operating system involved.
27. Gonzalo
IBM made many needed improvements to Linux. The OS can be made as secure as desired based on the installation parameters and included tools such as tripwire, IP Frames, etc. There are also special hardened distributions available which are: DARPA's Immunix, KRUD, Progeny Debian, Trustix and 35 others. Many of these hardened versions are based on the popular distributions such as Redhat.
Obviously, the IT leaders quoted are severely out of touch which reality. I have not even discussed the various embeded versions of Linux.
28. Cristian Nicola
To Paul Tansom: i think this is the 3rd time when i point this out: we're talking in the context of large enterprises - eg corporate networks.
Re windows 3.1 to be honest i do not have any of my old apps running, but the transition between different versions has always been very smooth for me. Sometimes it has been needed to re-compile things, and even to change some things - but God knows how many hours i had to spend because some programmer decided to completelly rewrite some simple API in Linux.
As about better admin tools: Have i ever said Linux does not offer better tools? While it can be very painful to do some simple things (one has to be careful what he does while being admin) - generally customizing the OS i do also find linux more convenient. But it is also slower - it takes more time, it takes more attention. In corportate environment having to carefully read the screen on 1000 computers is simply not possible.
Then there are other things to consider. A real server would scale better on windows than on linux - but then who writes real server software (i'm talking about the kind of the server handling 1000s of requests having 1000 of shared objects/structures). In a corporate environment there can be invoices created many times every minute and the data could come from various sources and so on.. for this particular kind i think windows is better.
29. Cristian Nicola
To james child: ok. i agree with you. I'm a stupid developer and i have no idea what am i talking about. This has to be the reason why nobody in the corporate world is using windows and this has to be the main reason why microsoft will go bankrupt in the next few years.
If you look careful at the way the market develops even .net has mainly a corporate target.
As about API i do by-pass it whenever i get a chance and yes i'm one of the morons who still writes ASM when gets the time to do it. But in real world things are moving too fast to have time not to care about API.
Once again: there are many types of consumers out there. There is no single OS to make everybody happy, but for small end user windows is much better (easyer to configure /install, easyer to find answers). In the enterprise market there are 2 types of targets : servers and desktops. The position of linux in the servers market is discutable, mainly because unixes are better hands down. In the corporate desktops windows is again hands down better - so what is what makes my position laughable?
30. anonymous
After reading a few paragraph about this article, I realized that is a waste of time.
Who are in the Agility Alliance?
What Cisco or Dell really know about OS?
Do you expect Microsoft and Sun say Linux is an excellent OS?
Please... Munir. Choose another title for your article. Couldn't you?
31. Gonzalo
To Christian: Let's get back to the dicussion concerning the topic of security: On the server side I will stack Linux running natively on an IBM iSeries against any Wintel Platform but why bother when one can run OS/400 (i5OS.) Solaris servers are more secure as well as HP's MPEiX. As far as scalability is concerned, Linux is in the lead on the 32 bit archetecture and Linux has been available for 64 bit processors for some time.
On the client side Windows was not designed for current global security vulnerabilities but they are 99 percent of the market. Security and heterogeneous network design alone suggest Linux is more secure but China might change these numbers quickly. Any thick client is going to have questionable security so devices and automation are best.
The streagth of Windows is their weakness. The OS was desined to be feature rich but the kernal needs to be hardened. Most software runs on Windows but this has nothing to do with security. Personally I prefer a MAC with Open Office and MySQL but I also run Windows and Linux. I would never run mission critical apps on Windows.
32. everyuser
As I responded, XP crashed . . . came back on Debian
33. Peter Risdon
silicon.com has form with this sort of thing. The headline here could have been "Linux competitors rubbish Linux - so what's new?". But they put up this sort of thing time and time again. I'm starting to think they do it to get a laugh out of the strident Linux evangelism and the fatuous Microsoft defenders.
Microsoft isn't going bust, but they have mentioned Linux as a threat to their profitability in disclosures to the NY stock exchange. Sun is the biggest loser as Linux rises. Dell gets advantageous licensing terms for not bundling Linux with their PCs, and so on.
But Novell and IBM were running the very largest networks long before Microsoft became a serious server supplier. Now they've committed to Linux because it's the best option. Simple as that.
The only real question here is: Are you dumb enough to buy this FUD?
34. H C Grant
To Cristian Nicola, In your last post you say "I think Windows is better" but you dont clearly say why .. other than indicating that 30,000 PC's can't be wrong!
You suggest that Linux can't be scaled to cope with large numbers of simultanious transactions. It was my understanding that this is more a function of the hardware design rather than the software. Linux being a unix was designed to run multiple simultainous processes,necessary when dealing with large simultanious IO. Windows will but my impression (possibly incorrect) is that it doesnt do it as well as linux. There are versions of the Linux kernel which recognises and utilises multiple processers and others which will form clusters. ( I dont think windows does this yet) It is also worth noting that IBM are pushing the idea (trying to increase sales of their big boxes!) of running multiple copies of Linux on top of VM. Due to the design of their hardware and VM they can effectively change the resources available to each Linux instance according to the load on that instance. I think I am right in saying that each of the running copies of Linux can also communicate using a virtual network. It would therefore seem to me that Linux is way ahead of windows when it comes to dealing with big IO.
H C Grant
35. Andrew Piesse
Possibly forking up the M$ 'monopoly
36. anonymous
If Mr Rasmussen has as much trouble with the English language as this article seems to suggest, Then I have no doubt his grasp of Linux is equally suspect.
Who ever said Linx was a language?
37. Crompton
Hope the author has done enough research to comment on Linux?!!
Corporates all over the world are embracing Linux and even the names mentioned in the article have Linux centres for development purpose...this shows no body wants to be left behind on the Linux bandwagon.
38. anonymous
I don't see the comparison to Google as an enterprise. It's a grid of 1000 servers and a firewall.
39. anonymous
Consider where the money is... First rule of reading articles. "Thou does protest too much" applies as well.
"The alliance comprises a group of IT hardware and software firms that have combined their expertise and products to help EDS create 'best of breed' solutions and compete with the likes of IBM Global Services and Hewlett-Packard for the most lucrative government and enterprise contracts."
They're contractors who would benefit if all people use the stuff they sell instead of free stuff.
As far as forking goes, anyone remember Lotus 1-2-3 and MS-DOS 5 vs DR-DOS? I seem to remember it being because MS changed DOS in the specific area that a popular (competitor's) product just happened to rely on.
What about MS Office and HTML it produces? You going to tell me that was not deliberate? Even IE had problems with that code.
Now to be fair, MS Windows is the most popular desktop software so it's no surprise that virus and worm writers (and the worms themselves)concentrate on PCs running Windows 9x/NT based kernels. Simply playing the IP address numbers game tells you that it's easier to find the most popular kernels so most try to find vulnerbilities in them. What's amazing is that sometimes with a standard such as an image compression method that exploits exist for ALL systems sometimes. That was a major fluke although it was pretty obvious if I was designing a header for a format.
BTW The oil barons metaphor is funny. (laughing)
40. Leon Brooks
Anonymous from LA: Cisco know quite a lot about OSes; they ship Linux with many of their larger, more powerful products. As to what they're doing tacitly endorsing insane babblings about Linux and scaling, your guess is as good as anybody's, I suppose.
41. anonymous
EDS has already retracted their comments.
This story was reported on slashdot ( http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/16/1517207&tid=163 ) and the "clarification" was a day later ( http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/18/2140242&tid=163 )
Pls. do your research before running a story.
This all happened around the 18/03/2005 and 19/03/2005.
Thanks
42. anonymous
To: Cristian Nicola
You claim that nobody in the corporate world uses Linux throughout their enterprise.
It would appear that you are not familiar with Deutsche Bahn. They have already migrated their timetable system and 55,00 of their users to Linux systems. Yes, on the desktop too. They are currently in the process of moving their sales and support systems to Linux. By the end of 2005, "all remaining critical systems, including databases, application servers, web servers, mail servers and network infrastructure, will be running on Linux".
Unlike most of the people here, I wouldn't say that you don't know what you are talking about. You simply seem to fear change - but be sure, things ARE changing.
43. anonymous
I take that back. I had said that I wouldn't say that you don't know what you are talking about. I just reread this:
"First of all: between the linux version of december and the one of this month there are literally thousands of incompatibilities. Not to mention vulnerabilities and changes in the API (this is what programmers use to develop software). Applications developped for windows 3.x can still work in windows 2003.
Imagine in a corporation what it means to update 30000 machines because there is a vulnerability."
Wow.
Assuming they actually exist, the alleged "thousands of incompatibilities" that you mention don't seem to affect most Linux users.
Meanwhile, I've run up against lots of show-stoppers when migrating from one version of Windows to another. As a matter of fact, I spent last week being forced to upgrade the boxes for an entire department to XP because the new version of a mission-critical app was not going to work on 2K. I've never had that happen with Linux.
As for the vulnerabilities, no Windows admin has to imagine the hassle of updating computers due to a vulnerability. For the most part, that's a monthly occurrence.
The only thing one would have to imagine is the number. Many are fortunate in that 30000 is a number much higher than they would normally have to deal with. Some of us are not so lucky.
Your patter is good though so I'm still sticking with the notion that you do know what you're talking about. I'm changing my focus to your indentity.
Ballmer? Is that you?
44. anonymous
Iain Benger-Stewphenson asks if Solaris 10 is free to users. The answer is simple, look at the Sun website. I have ditched Linux at home and am running Solaris 10 on 2 Intel and 2 Sparc boxes. The license for this was $0, to run RedHat on the same number of servers in the same configurationw would have cost me $349 for each of the Intel boxes and was not available for sparc. If I want a subscription from Sun for support, then that would still only come in at $120 per server or $240 for a 4 hour response. I think I know which is cheaper.
45. Rob Lewis
Strange, Cisco is migrating to Linux in-house or are aiming to be around 70% Linux eventually.
About 60% of the world's super computers are clustered Linux systems. Somebody better tell them to give it up-won't scale!
As far as security goes, it has been all been said before, except Linux now has Trustifier. MS can't come close there.
46. leebert
FUD ALERT! EDS contradicts itself!!! see: http://tinyurl.com/5gacs
(original)
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1813634491;fp;2;fpid;1
BTW, let's think about this one for a sec... take AIX or Solaris... What is insecure or non-scalable about Solaris or AIX, they are *nix variants, both have HACMP, NUMA, etc. Last time I looked on RS/6000s, AIX scales to 32 physical nodes, etc. OK, so what about Linux? Linux has HA, NUMA, & better yet, with Linux I can chain-gang 100's of PCs as an ad-hoc supercomputer cluster *ON THE FLY* with the CD-bootable distros like Dyne:Bolic, Cluster Knoppix & Clusterix (all based on OpenMosix).
As for the FUD about Linux on the mainframe, IBM wouldn't be selling it on mainframes if it didn't work reliably or securely.
47. Cristian Nicola
to the Network Manager from Indiana:
a) have you ever been to Germany?
b) I do NOT fear change - i am a programmer and i get my money from writing software - at the end of the day i couldnt care less if i write software for windows, linux or mac or any other thing.
When you write software you learn not to get emotionally involved with the code you produce - most of the times it may be used for less time that you would imagine it does.
In regards to linux vs windows is the "sweet american way" who drives this movement, it is the wonderful corporate thinking that pushes windows.
You could of course tell me that i have no clue what i'm talking about or that i'm a moron or whatever - frankly i'm tired of being called names for pointing out the obvious fact: Microsoft is there and it is in a much more convenient position that Linux.
The real problem i think it is the fact that there are way too many people calling themselves "programmers" and have no clue what they are talking about - the huge majority of them are "players" in windows arena. And all these only make windows look like a bad OS - compare the huge ammount of junk produced for windows with the misterious and dark art of programming on linux - where only the admin knows how to magically issue the "iyyenjr -f 123 | tthw -d"32a"" command... Simply knowing that command makes you look more professional. FYI i've seen windows servers handling over 1 milion transactions / hour for over 200 days - without any single problem whatsoever. But then there was a firewal that would prevent many things, and the server was properly configured ....
One more thing - too many people confuse Linux with Unix, so please make sure you would not put both these in the same basket.
PS: in 2004 i've left Germany where i was working as a System Developer - and i can only say one thing: there are no money on this world that would make me go back to live there.
48. anonymous
"to the Network Manager from Indiana:
a) have you ever been to Germany?"
Yes.
"b) I do NOT fear change - i am a programmer and i get my money from writing software - at the end of the day i couldnt care less if i write software for windows, linux or mac or any other thing.
When you write software you learn not to get emotionally involved with the code you produce - most of the times it may be used for less time that you would imagine it does."
Ok.
"In regards to linux vs windows is the 'sweet american way' who drives this movement, it is the wonderful corporate thinking that pushes windows."
Not sure I understand what you mean.
"You could of course tell me that i have no clue what i'm talking about or that i'm a moron or whatever"
I very specifically didn't do that.
" - frankly i'm tired of being called names for pointing out the obvious fact: Microsoft is there and it is in a much more convenient position that Linux."
I will agree with you there. Microsoft is definitely in a more convenient position than Linux. That is due to unethical and in many cases illegal business practices.
"The real problem i think it is the fact that there are way too many people calling themselves 'programmers' and have no clue what they are talking about - the huge majority of them are 'players' in windows arena. And all these only make windows look like a bad OS"
Are you saying that Windows is made to look bad by the number of users it has that don't know how to use it properly? If so, why does it look so bad to many people who do know how to use it properly? If that's not what you're saying, perhaps you could restate your point.
"- compare the huge ammount of junk produced for windows with the misterious and dark art of programming on linux - where only the admin knows how to magically issue the "iyyenjr -f 123 | tthw -d"32a"" command... Simply knowing that command makes you look more professional."
Who exactly is impressed by one's familiarity with that command?
"FYI i've seen windows servers handling over 1 milion transactions / hour for over 200 days - without any single problem whatsoever. But then there was a firewal that would prevent many things, and the server was properly configured ...."
I don't think the notion that Windows "can" be secure or "can" work efficiently has ever been in dispute.
"One more thing - too many people confuse Linux with Unix, so please make sure you would not put both these in the same basket."
I don't.
"PS: in 2004 i've left Germany where i was working as a System Developer - and i can only say one thing: there are no money on this world that would make me go back to live there."
So, because you didn't like living in Germany the fact that Deutsche Bahn is migrating to Linux is a non-issue? What happened to not getting emotionally involved?
49. Steve Kettlewell
Solaris 10 is open source and free*
*COMPLETELY FREE
50. anonymous
"Cisco, Dell, EDS, EMC, Fuji Xerox, Microsoft and Sun"
O my gosh, their businesses are all reliant on LINUX.
Munir Kotadia might be a good journalist in IT-sphere but not in business.
51. anonymous
'EDS' and 'best of breed' in the same sentence; there's a contradiction if I ever saw one.
52. anonymous
What about the anti-virus and bolt-on-patch security firms?
They'd all be out of business if “enterprises” and individuals moved away from Microsoft.
And then what about the poor "IT heavyweights" themselves?
Almost makes me want to cry.
Open source - whatever next!
53. Tony McNamara
It's a bunch of frightened vendors huddling in the corner saying "We're not afraid of IBM!". No technical merit whatsoever. No point in trying to argue on technical grounds. Those guys don't care about that.
54. Paul Tansom
Christian Nicola, I'm afraid there is no need for "the 3rd time when i point this out" that "we're talking in the context of large enterprises - eg corporate networks". I am quite well aware of that, and stand by the fact that Linux is quite capable of working in that environment. For one it has its roots in the concepts and methodology of Unix, which is the corporate network market that Microsoft was aiming NT and its successors at. Secondly I very much doubt that corporate heavyweights such as Novell and IBM would be pushing Linux so much if it wasn't key to their target market. I won't go into the techincalities of how Linux can act as a Windows domain controller, file and print server or how many of Windows tools for scaling up are based on technology already implimentable in Linux (e.g. AD / LDAP). If you don't already know, do some research or ask someone who does :)