Re: Oracle chief architect says there ought to be one Linux distribution: Red Hat

On May 8, 2:26 pm, The Ghost In The Machine <ew..._at_sirius.tg00suus7038.net> wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, joel garry
> <joel-ga..._at_home.com>
>  wrote
> on Thu, 8 May 2008 13:34:30 -0700 (PDT)
> <93714048-dfc9-4b1d-b2d3-c82974a31..._at_j33g2000pri.googlegroups.com>:
>
> > On May 8, 10:07 am, chrisv <chr..._at_nospam.invalid> wrote:
> >> joel garry wrote:
> >> >I've come to the opinion that linux as sold/supported is a toy OS
> >> >running on toy hardware,
>
> >> Yeah, that's why countless corporations and research organizations use
> >> and depend on it.  Tell google that Linux is a "toy OS".
>
> >> Idiot.
>
> > Well, I may be an idiot, but what does it say that even more
> > corporations use Windows? (Too avoid confusion: I'm biased against
> > Windows and for unix.  A decade ago I was very pro-linux in cola.).
> > It says that countless corporations are wrong, to me.
>
> Define "wrong".  Both solutions work, with a cost.
> That cost has multiple units:
>
> [1] initial licensing/monetary outlay for OS and apps relevant to
>     the initial problem
> [2] reliability/downtime
> [3] IT support staff effort (man-days per machine per year, perhaps)
> [4] IT training costs (including procedure development)
> [5] staff training costs
> [6] additional hardware and software not related to [1] in order
>     to keep the entire system running/responsive/virus-free/sane
> [7] palatability to upper management; for example, they might not
>     even look at [non-]Microsoft or [non-]Oracle solutions, terminating
>     any proposals outside of their worldview with not quite extreme
>     prejudice.

Very well said. I'm using "wrong" here in the sense that management decisions vary from some objective truth. If many organizations have a high variance, they may quite well all be wrong. It is also possible for technically wrong decisions (ie, choosing an inferior operating system and/or database with a semi-bogus app, that can still be made to work in the business) to be managerially correct, I'm sure we've all seen versions of that, whether or not we want to admit it.

>
> > Success in the
> > marketplace does not mean technical superiority, and often means the
> > converse.
>
> > We all ought to know the history - some smart guy wanted to know how
> > 386's worked.  Getting from there to a professional OS?  I say it is
> > arguable.  Any time someone can point out something major where
> > Windows works better, first of all...
>
> [1] Generating profit for Microsoft.
> [2] Threads, maybe.
> [3] Might be easier to sell to large corporations; Dell
> and Microsoft in particular are advertising Microsoft
> System Center.
>

And Oracle pushing software as a service. Feh.

jg

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