Total Cost of Ownership less for Linux

[pogi_2nr]

yup, I also think it depends on the operating environment and various business requirements.

I can easily see where opensource applications can significantly cut costs to companies,
large or small.
The only thing that seems work against it is the lack of support.

This is kind of like buying a prebuilt box vs. building your own. A company would drop $600k
on Dell server when they could build their own system that have 2-3 times the processing
power, why? one may ask. It is all about support and guaranteed availability.

[SQLDBA]

Linux Support Is Available Still,and the quality is Good.Windows Strength is Availability of apps and their Maturity.Linux has a Price and Stability of their side.

[Gillion]

@SQLDBA History has shown that microsoft was at on point in the same situation as Linux. They were competing with MAC's for the desktop and MAC systems were superior then. Then MS was competing with UNIX and the UNIX maturity which was over 20 years old at the time going up against the orginal BSD systems.

It was techy passionate types (and good marketing) that squeezed MS products (which was really not on par with UNIX tehn) into the enterprise and the same for desktop since at that time MS had price and cheap hardware as their strong suits.

History repeats and those who do not attach a significance to history are doomed to be shocked by the changes that history demands.

[Gillion]

And in those days arguments of TCO were put forth between the new Microsoft kids and the old UNIX guard.

[jamrock]

It was techy passionate types (and good marketing) that squeezed MS products (which was really not on par with UNIX tehn) into the enterprise

History repeats and those who do not attach a significance to history are doomed to be shocked by the changes that history demands.

Hmmmm...

Here I am agreeing with Gillion again. Corporations have several criteria for choosing software. Technical superiority is not the only one. Ease of use and the availabilty of compatible applications are high on the list.

Microsoft understood this from early in the game. Apple made the mistake of thinking that technical superiority was enough. They ended up with a 5% share of the market.

Apple has learnt from its mistakes. The Ipod has been a huge success. We can all learn from Apple's experience.

[pigeonflight]

can you give me an example (with actual costs) where Windows is cheaper (total cost of ownership)?

[SQLDBA]

Well off the top of mt head, Linux TCO would be higher at:

A bank where core apps are written in VB(The App cost over 10 million US) and MS office are used to create integrated solutions with a lot of macros.(Software Redevelopment).

The technical staff there have 90% windows knowledge and 10% unix and as400 knowledege.(Staff Retraining).

The End Users are 100% Windows Literate and 0% Linux Literate.

The End Users are resistant to change(The dont like config files,and cant compile a makefile anyway) (A cost when productivity drops).

The Infrastaructure is Intenally file servers are Windows 2k Datacenter Clusters with Unix Servers serving the Wan/E-commerce infrastructure.

The current System has one new customers due to its speed,features and flexibility(ROI and competitive advantage).

Who would switch to linux ? and what would it cost ?

[pogi_2nr]

The End Users are resistant to change(The dont like config files,and cant compile a makefile anyway) (A cost when productivity drops).

The Infrastaructure is Intenally file servers are Windows 2k Datacenter Clusters with Unix Servers serving the Wan/E-commerce infrastructure.

The current System has one new customers due to its speed,features and flexibility(ROI and competitive advantage).

Who are you calling the end users? Most likely the end users would be seeing
some user friendly front end to the application.

[SQLDBA]

A loan officer is an end user (Letters),The Human Resource Manager is an End User (Letters),The Financial Controller( alot of Excel MAcros is an end use).

[Gillion]

@SQLDBA and end user as you described has no bussiness knowing what a Makefile or config file is. He has no bussiness being outside of the GUI. Very much in the same way that they would be limited by user profiles on a Windows based workstation.

And enduser on Windows is the same on Linux.

As an admin, you would be giving them the basics.

A GUI, keyboard and a mouse to do their job and thats it... should they need more the admin sets it up.

What the devil would I be doing as an admin telling my users to edit config or makefiles for ?

I do that myself... log in from my terminal or remotedesktop and see what they talking about.