Competing With Linux
posted on july 15, 2003, tag: software
Right, so I somehow ended up over at the Microsoft Partners website the other day (not sure exactly how), and stumbled upon their Resources for Competing with Linux section. How disgusting. I love one of the sentences on the front page:
It's becoming ever clearer that the Windows platform offers better total cost of operation (TCO) than Linux. Use these resources to make the case that Windows will save your customers' time, frustration, and money.
What is this based on? I've set up plenty of Windows web servers, and plenty of Linux web servers. It takes, on average, about 30 minutes to have Linux up and running with Apache, PHP, MySQL, and FTP access. It takes about 45 minutes to install Windows.
And what is this nonsense about TCO? A simple price comparison proves this wrong from the get-go. For instance, as of the time this entry was written, here are the costs (from Buy.com) to build both a Linux web server and a Windows web server of equal proportion (not including hardware, as they both run on the same boxes):
Linux
- Red Hat Linux 9.0 Professional - $133.99
- Apache Web Server - Free
- PHP - Free
- MySQL - Free
- FTP/Mail Servers - Free
- Total: $133.99*
* It should be noted that you don't have to buy an expensive distro of Linux to run a web server, so the total price here is actually more than it would cost you if you went with a free distro. This is not an option using Windows.
Windows
- Windows XP Professional - $270.99
- Microsoft Internet Information Services - Free (bundled)
- ASP - Free (bundled)
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (Developer edition) - $439.98
- FTP/Mail Servers - Free (bundled)
- Total: $710.97
Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems that the Windows box would cost $576.98 more just to set up. So far I'm not seeing this better TCO that Microsoft is claiming. Now I know MS would claim that maintenance of Windows is easier, therefore lowering the long-term cost of server up-keep. I've found that not to be true, however.
Every day something goes wrong with one of our servers here at work. Every day. If it's not Exchange (something I didn't include above because of the free SMTP server bundled with the OS, but Exchange is $1245.99 for 5 users), it's IIS or permissions are screwed up or the server crashes because of load. The last Linux web server I set up crashed twice in 6 months, both times due to the T-1's router going down. I also never had to modify permissions once they were initially set. Also, not a single file made itself read-only whenever it felt like it.
It's crazy to say that Windows is cheaper to use than Linux. It's just not. But that's how Microsoft likes to present information—falsely. The rest of that developer page is littered with ridiculous news headlines, features, and articles all about how to sell Microsoft products in spite of the rising success of Linux. There's even a "news" headline about how there was a security flaw found in MySQL... that's funny, I just downloaded Service Pack 3a (that's the fourth since release) to fix more of the hundreds of security problems in SQL Server 2000.
These kinds of things are the reason people don't like Microsoft. It's the constant Nazi-esque feeling you get when reading their press releases or visiting their website. Everything feels so fake and so anti-open source and so anti-competition. I used to be a huge Microsoft fan, but over the past year or two I have really started to dislike their business practice (and some of their products). I just don't understand why they need to do business this way. If Microsoft is better than Linux, why do they need to have a whole section to prove that? I can't find that kind of section on Red Hat's site.
Comments
There are 5 comments, comments are closed
Ryan Powers on 07/16/2003:
not that its true, but when Microsoft refers to TCO, being less for their products than for linux products what they are relaly refering to is the training, and number of people its take to administer a linux netowrk as opposed to a windows network.
since they (MS) own windows, they know it better. as a result it takes less people to manage their windows networks. TO admin linux, they have to shelll out more cash to learn about it and how to use it... as a result their (Miscrosoft's) cost of operation for linux is higher. This, I think, is how Microsoft is getting their numbers.
Also, they dont figure in their tyranical upgrading contracts which require most major contracts to upgrade very two years or suffer fairly substantial pricing the next time they do update.
Jonathan on 07/16/2003:
This post is great. The servers here are always having issues too. Funny how the Cobalt server I use for my freelance work never has problems.
Courtney on 07/16/2003:
There's free and then there's free. The larger open-source projects are free only so long as they're used for non-profit, education, or non-distributed applications. I'm not saying that you're wrong — I have no doubt that a MySQL commercial license is cheaper than a MS SQL Server one — but free sometimes needs clarifying.
BTW, the last two posts have way more typos than usual. Spell checker on the fritz?
Garrett on 07/17/2003:
Valid point, Courtney. And yes, I had been writing directly into MT so I wasn't noticing the typos. They've been fixed. Thanks.
Brice on 07/21/2003:
It might be worth noting that while many open source projects are free only for non-profits, etc, MySQL, Apache, Redhat and PHP are all available free to commercial firms. The only difference being with the support provided. I've never been in the situation where I could really call Microsoft about a bug in windows, so I don't have any idea how good their support system is. On the whole, for individual users, the amount of support provided by the developing company is probably about the same.
When talking about the more extreme open source operating systems, you do get caught in problems were patches require recompiling the kernel. While that usually isn't as nasty as it sounds (manuals are usually very well written), it might be more than what the typical Windows admin would care to do.