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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/19/2003 3:56:39 PM PST by ShadowAce
There's something fishy about freeware
Jacques Loubser, programme director for enterprise consulting services at Business Connexion, says companies seduced by "free" operating systems will ultimately find their choice constrains them.
While many users try to measure the operating system in medium to large organisations purely on the cost per desktop by product, owning a desktop environment has costs that far outweigh that of the associated licensing.
Installation is one of the first issues businesses stumble across. After organisations find their free-to-buy software they need somebody to install it. While it's not at all difficult to find someone who can put Microsoft's Windows 2000 on a server for the organisation, it can be a little more difficult to have someone to put Red Hat version 7.2 on the same device.
And that's where the true cost of an operating system begins to creep in. While Microsoft skills certainly do not come for free, they are widely available and Linux skills are difficult to come by, and users are at the mercy of the few vendors in this country that support the operating system. Also, customers might not be first in the queue when it comes to finding a solution to a nasty problem or having a solution customised or developed from scratch.
There is an additional facet to the skills cost issue too: staff need to be trained, not just administrators and support staff, but end-user staff like those in accounting and human resources who are faced with a completely new interface, one that might closely mimic, but ultimately is not the Windows they know.
During installation users will encounter their next biggest headache. Linux, as the leading so-called free-to-buy operating system, would be the obvious alternative to Microsoft's platforms. But it is sticky about the device drivers required to operate various hardware components. Without the proper drivers, devices will simply not work. The big difference between the Linux operating system variants and those from Microsoft is device driver support. Microsoft natively supports many devices, with users in many cases able to select the device from a list included with the operating system, while Linux tends to be selective in what it will and will not accept.
The next thing business users will notice is that there is a distinct lack of applications when compared to Microsoft-supporting alternatives. This is simply due to history: developers, who must make money from the products they create, need to have a critical mass market to sustain them. Because Microsoft is so widely employed, it makes sense for developers to support the platform. Years of this ongoing support have resulted in many mature applications for the Microsoft platform. The same cannot be said for Linux and other free platforms, although many applications might currently be under development. And few of those already available are mature.
Businesses also have little control over the speed and course of development of these applications, as the freeware pundits lay claim to. And, in the open source world, when business does have a say in applications, it usually leads to multiple variants that appear similar, which introduces a software management problem for businesses and ultimately little support for the application in question.
Business needs are one issue and what the propeller heads in the basement want to do is another. While they may find it cool to mess with the operating system's source code and kernel, so upping their credibility in geeky chat rooms, business needs may dictate the need to standardise on a reliable kernel version that does not allow simply anyone to change it. The ability to change the operating system's source code might seem like a major coup to developers but to the business the potential nightmare of spaghetti code causes sleepless nights.
In the end, the choice is simple. While technically one platform may be more proficient at certain tasks than another, as evidenced by the plethora of benchmark studies available for download from supporters in both camps, ultimately businesses cannot afford to leave themselves vulnerable to the multitude of uncertainties that continue to exist in the freeware world.
There’s something fantastic about freeware
Mr Loubser seems to have rehashed a survey that was conducted at the end of last year by the IDC group. The study was a Microsoft sponsored study. We all know how business works - those paying the bills get the most say. Nobody owns Linux, so nobody has to pay anyone to praise it.
Other independent studies have shown that the total cost of ownership with Linux is reduced by the fact that a skilled administrator for linux on average could handle 44 machines in his daily workload. His Microsoft counterpart only managed to look after 10 machines.
Mr Groenewald, your challenge fails. My younger brother - standard eight level - and all his friends have all installed Linux of some or other form, from scratch, with little or no training, onto a machine successfully. In most cases this was done in under a day. These aren’t genius kids, just the average buddy at school. Of course, to make matters worse, these youngsters were coming from a tainted Microsoft background!
Designing a graphical user interface is not programming. Visual Basic may automate this nicely, but has Mr Groenewald seen the free alternative - SunONE Studio for Java? It does the same job. However, comparing programming languages belongs to another debate.
For those who believe there are no applications available for open source platforms, take a look at sourceforge.net, hosting over 50 000 open source projects, varying in maturity from new and cutting edge to tried and tested.
OpenOffice provides an office application of equal stature to Microsoft Office, barring a mail client, which they leave to a dedicated group from Ximian to develop under the name of Evolution. Evolution beats Outlook hands down.
I challenge those on the pro-Microsoft side of this debate to find a business application that they believe has no open source counterpart.
I guarantee, if they open their browser windows, they will be suitably surprised.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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GNU, Linux, Open Office, KDE, Mozilla, etc., are not 'freeware.' They are free software, or open source. 'freeware' generally refers to proprietary, closed-source software which is distributed gratis.
I've written a little poem about it, just to show how much I care.
Opera for my browser,
Linux for my OS.
Windoze in my roundfile
And that makes ME the Boss.
Windoze bites...
Redhat has already put out versions 7.3 and 8.0, both of which are easier to install than Windows 2000 server and a heck of a lot easier than installing Windows 98 desktop.
CAD
It takes "training" to RTfM (read the manual) and install an OS? God help these people feed themselves if their microwave breaks.
FUD Alert.
Anyone who has tried to do an install of Win 98 from scratch without a restore disk knows the pain of trying to track down and reinstall/configure/juggle/cajole all the various drivers you need to get the system really operating (no pun intended). That's par for the course with a heterogeneous hardware environment, but it's still fair to say that you are correct about 98 installs not being terribly easy, at least past the initial load stage.
Honestly, I don't know how Red Hat stacks up in terms of ease of use on getting all the necessary drivers installed.
And they make money from creating free products how? On support?
Compared to what is available for the Windows platform, LinuxCad is an amateurish piece of junk.
"I'm not a CAD person but I also believe that Open Cascade may fit the bill (www.opencascade.com). Another possible would CAVOR (www.cavor.org)."
Open Cascade is a programming toolset, not a CAD solution--I want to USE the CAD program, not write it. The CAVOR web page takes so long to download and open that I suspect the product is no better.
Believe me, I would LOVE to find a good CAD solution under Linux--but at this point, there simply is NOT one. I subscribe to a Linux CAD email group, and they say the same thing
That's how IBM does it: you can pay as much for them to "support" Linux for you as you would have paid for AIX or OS400.
But that isn't really the answer either... Open source software also has a community model for support: You ask a newsgroup rather than a drone in a call center, and your odds of a good answer are much better. Big companies that make critical infrastructure products, like Juniper routers, rely on "unsupported" open source software. Somehow their customers don't really have a problem with that.
Whenever I acquire another machine, either brand-new or as a used hand-me-down, I visit the manufacturer's web site and grab all of the drivers for Win9x, 2K, XP, and burn them to a mini CD. One never knows what a particular box will be doing/running a year from now. If I ever sell, trade or give the box away, that CD goes with it. I wish more folks would do that. It makes reinstalls so much easier.
Honestly, I don't know how Red Hat stacks up in terms of ease of use on getting all the necessary drivers installed.
Usually the two most difficult things to set up are Video and Sound. The installation routines for X11 have gotten much better in the recent distros. Probing for video chips and memory and recognizing various monitor brands is much improved... I haven't needed to hand-edit a XF86Config file since RedHat 7.2 came out.
Sound, however, continues to be a challenge. It used to be possible to use the sndconfig tool to try loading every driver module on difficult chipsets to see which one worked best... now, sadly, RedHat has eliminated that tool.
But no matter what brand of hardware you're trying to set up, be assured that someone has tried it before, and there is likely a resource out on the web somewhere. You may need to edit modules.conf or put some modprobes into rc.local or something "messy" like that, but it's worth the trouble when you finally get the stuff working. The Linux on Laptops page is very handy, and I used it when I set up my latest acquisition -- an IBM Thinkpad 600E.
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