Re: Intel vs Sparc

>>>>> "Rauf" == Rauf Sarwar <rs_arwar_at_hotmail.com> writes:

 Rauf> Linux is doing "Ok" at this time... it may do pretty good in
 Rauf> the future, but it still has to compete with Sun and HP in the
 Rauf> high end enterprise system market and low to medium end
 Rauf> WinNT/2K/XP server market. It would be hard at this time to
 Rauf> convince the large companies to migrate from industry proven
 Rauf> Sun and HP to Linux. I think Linux has a good shot in
 Rauf> penetrating the low to medium end market and challenge
 Rauf> WinNT/2K/XP. On technology... Linux may be better then M$ but
 Rauf> one advantage that M$ has is that it is cheaper and easier to
 Rauf> run and maintain. M$ System admins on average can administer a
 Rauf> system with less training then e.g. Unix admins, and generally
 Rauf> command less salary. However, if you look at total cost of
 Rauf> operation (License fees and all), Linux may come out ahead.

I agree Linux has a long way to go before it can challenge HP, Sun et. al., but I'm not convinced this is really the area it is or should be aiming at.

However, I cannot agree that M$ is cheaper on any metric. All the experience I have had says exactly the opposite and I found this supported at a sys admin confernce I attended a couple of years ago. In one of the forums I attended, those sys admins who worked in a heterogenious server environment believed that 80-90% of their time was spent attending to M$ servers, yet their unix/linux systems actually provided 80% of the applications/services provided. Most of them wanted to use more Linux, but found management reluctant - it seems everyone wanted to wait and see someone else do it before they were prepared to take the risk. I think this is like the e-mail sig I saw recently

"THe pointy-haired boss combines two characteristics rarely seen in combination with each other, a total lack of understanding of IT and a very strong opinion about it."

Tim Received on Sat Feb 08 2003 - 06:22:26 CST