The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Windows versus Linux "the facts"

Windows versus Linux "the facts"

Thanks to W2K News I have found this marvellous link.

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/

The "fact" I find fascinating is "Wintel Server ten times less expensive to operate than Linux mainframe".

Well yes, but what about the comparison with Lintel web servers. The present comparison is a little like "Honda motorcycle twenty times better fuel consumption than Mercedes articulated truck".

Still Stu of W2K News probably summed it up best:

"I actually like this. MS is taking Linux seriously. This is good news. Competition keeps everybody on their toes with great benefits to the users. "

Stephen Jones
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Quite annoying in a humours way. A part of me want to shout "Oh yeah, heard about Google???" but the wiser chunks of my brain says "Its a troll, let it go".
oh well.

Eric DeBois
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Sorry Eric not with you.

Stephen Jones
Sunday, January 18, 2004

I was describing my reactions to "the facts", not to your post.
I.E, I agree with you, (I think).

While its not technichly a troll (I dont think they try to piss people off), its fuddy enough to count as one in my book.

Eric DeBois
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Um, it's a targeted rebuttal, not a general-consumption "Windows beats Linux" marketing document.

I'm not sure if you've seen the IBM ad where the exec has the police in the datacenter claiming "all our servers have been stolen" and the sysadmin replies "we replaced them all with that" and points to an IBM box?

That IBM box was a mainframe server, and that ad (among others) is what this study is replying to.

HTH,
Philo

Philo
Sunday, January 18, 2004

It a fairly pointless thing to compare a single Wintel server, with what could be anything from a mainframe to a Blade-system to whatever.

The truth is that Linux is harder to operate, but generally you don't want to run your own servers. There are hundreds reputable of rent-a-box firms who will tend and care for your server in a nice big server farm.

These firm tend to charge more for Microsoft products, on a large scale simpler Linux/FreeBSD systems are more predicatable.

That's what's going to cause M$ grief. Why buy a M$-box+SQLServer+ASP .Net+a server admin, when I can just rent a Linux-box with Apache+MySQL at $60 a month?

A N Other Student
Sunday, January 18, 2004

off-targettargetted rebuttals that don't mention the target!

I've got a file in the labs at work I would like all the computers in each lab to access from the main machine. However MS limits me to ten machines connecting at once unless I keep the file on W2000 server. Do you think MS will run the comparative cost of installing 4 Samba servers (one in each lab) as I'm going to do, with four W2K Server licenses plus 180 client access licenses?

Perhaps you could persuade them to sponsor my research into the matter :)

Stephen Jones
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Student,

The ease or difficulty of maintaining a server is largely a factor of the administrator's background. My three UNIX machines cause me considerably less grief and administration time than my one Windows machine. It's probably nothing inherent in the operating system, but rather the fact that I'm more familiar with the UNIX servers and do a better job of heading problems off at the pass.

Clay Dowling
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Next, I think I will call Larry Ellison and see what he recommends as a database.

Mike
Sunday, January 18, 2004

"off-targettargetted rebuttals that don't mention the target!"

Dude, keep your eye on the ball. Your initial rant was about the "wintel vs. linux mainframe" comparison - that's the target. If you want to compare wintel vs. lintel, then this comparison isn't for you.

Philo

Philo
Sunday, January 18, 2004

They compared a mainframe to a wintel server with two 900Mhz Pentiun III Xeon server. Is that roughly equivalent?

Andres
Monday, January 19, 2004

"Is that roughly equivalent? "

does it have to be? they stated clearly what they were comparing and (without bothering to read through the marketing bs) I assume theyve been as clear about the results.

<g> if there isn't a manager in the world who would look further than the fact it was a 'comparison with linux' and 'linux lost' then we can hardly blame MS for that.

FullNameRequired
Monday, January 19, 2004

or, to put it another way, if theres anyone out there who still believes whitepapers prepared by one or other of the manufacturuers of the products being compared then frankly they deserve to lose their money.

When I first came into this industry I used to seriously read that kind of crap in an attempt to find out about the products.

<g> Im embarrased to admit that the practice lasted around a year before I finally gave it up and started looking for more accurate info.

turns out it doesn't actually exist....

FullNameRequired
Monday, January 19, 2004

>>turns out it doesn't actually exist...

True... everyone has an agenda.

Eric DeBois
Monday, January 19, 2004

Not that I expect this kind of thing to be unbiased, but I checked the pdf because I was curious about how many intel servers it took to compete with a mainframe and it surprised me to see they only used one. Wouldn't they need at least two, if only to have the same expected downtime?

And if they would need more servers then the hardware costs of the wintel server would begin to escalate. Even if they want to make Microsoft look good they need to keep it reasonably.

Andres
Monday, January 19, 2004

Dear Philo,
I hope they're paying you overtime for this :)

Didn't you say the advert said "Who's stolen the serverS?" and not "Who's stolen the server?" Surely if they were going to rebut the ad (and I can't think of anything stupider than rebutting a joke ad with a "White Paper"). then they should have used a few Wintel boxes for the comparison.

More to the point why target a misconceived ad in the first place. I don't know a manager replacing a cluster with a mainframe; I thought the tendency was the other way round. If anybody is thinking of doing it they would have very precise requirements that are hardly going to be answered by this piece of "research".

The point is that if MS produce obvious junk somewhere, then nobody is going to believe what they say next time. It is quite possible that the other two surveys are reasonable, but plenty of people aren't going to bother.

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 19, 2004

[sigh] Not just the ad, but the whole general concept of server consolidation with an IBM mainframe thingo. I was using the ad as an example of IBM's marketing strategy.

Badly worded reply on my part, I apologize.

Philo

Philo
Monday, January 19, 2004

It seems to me that MS and IBM marketing departments are locked in a bitter race to trash their respective reputaitions - with the unusual twist that it's MS's reputation that MS marketing is successfully trashing, and IBM's that is being wrecked by Big Blue's marketing.

You'd probably do better to grin and duck Philo :)

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 19, 2004

That's hallarious; you managed to fit the root respect and the word reputation in the same sentence as MS and IBM!

Kline Bottle Arbiter
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

I'm doing an essay on the subject and all I read is Unix people bad mouthing MS ... cool but from my point of view it can turn the common consumer off. It may be better but for who ... I know my granny won't like it and I know most 10 year old's won't like it. When it sells to the mass market then it may be better for all, until then it seems to be a Server OS and will always be.

Billy
Friday, March 12, 2004