Submitted by “Experts say that migrations from Unix to Linux have slowed down because all the low-hanging fruit has now been picked. Linux growth in the U.S. x86 server market has, over the past six quarters, started to falter and reverse its positive course relative to Windows Server and the market as a whole.” More here.
‘Linux Losing Market Share to Windows Server’
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Linux > Windows
I do not want to troll but this looks like one big advertisement. I only see windows logos and people of MS speaking at this page.
If I look to previous announcements from Dell their Linux sales grow increased more then there windows sales (percent wise). Same to Novell and Redhat their increased sales.
So I call this magical-stuff with numbers and a clear FUD sponsore campaign from MS again. Like the “Get-the-facts” ad banner I see above this webform
Edited 2007-10-26 05:53
Just did some research on the writer. He works for Ziff Davis Media, a company that is collaborating with Windows a lot, also because they have their very own interest in pushing Windows.
“In the United States, the Company publishes six magazine including PC Magazine, eWEEK, CIO Insight, Baseline, Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games For Windows. ”
and, even better:
“To our advertising and marketing customers, we deliver access to the content environment and community necessary to reach their most important audience, and, most importantly, help them drive sales growth for their companies.”
(http://www.ziffdavis.com/about/company)
I guess this tells us a lot about the value of the article.
This article, sad to say is not exactly news. This has been reported in many other channels. You are looking for a conspiracy where none exists.
Anyone half in tune to the market would have told you that as businesses finished migrating to Linux from Unix, sales would slow down. What is so difficult to understand about this. My god, I was reading about this a year ago in an article about Novell.
And in a day when so many are quick to point to blogs and wikipedia, it is quite ridiculous to outright dismiss an article by Eweek simply because it reports something that doesn’t mesh with how you want the world to work. I will leave it to someone else to explain exactly how much more wrong it would be if the report falsley claimed that Linux was growing at an outstanding rate when it actually was not.
The solution is not to revert to conspiracies, do you honestly think that companies like Red Hat or Novell are simply going to just chalk this up to some nefarious reasons, or are they simply going to work harder at marketing their product and improving customer relations and communications?
You know the old saying, if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen really applies to this.
My god, I was reading about this a year ago in an article about Novell.
In Novell’s world, this has been going on for years, and years, and years. No, it isn’t news at all. This is why Novell decided to get into the Linux world, as Netware had continued to decline, in order to bolster their market share and revenue, and given the fact that they just hadn’t got the resources to push Netware to where it needed to be.
What have Novell done in the past four years with respect to the competition? Other than not actually compete with their competitors and sign a deal with said competitor that says “Pretty please, don’t hurt us!”, they have done absolutely nothing.
Uh oh, here we go again!
In the past four years, Novell has done the following:
-Ported NCP to linux
-Ported NSS to linux
-Ported eDirectory to linux(cross platform enabled to span over NetWare, Linux, and Windows)
-Ported GroupWise to linux(cross platform enabled to span over NetWare, Linux, and Windows)
-Built the next generation Zen platform on linux
-Ported NDPS/iPrint to linux
-Rebuilt part(server.exe) of NetWare to be virtual machine aware.
-Ported DNS/DHCP directory integrated services to linux.
That’s just a snip-it. Has Novell done a good job selling their products? Clearly not. Can they do a better job with many facets of their business? Absolutely. Has Novell “done absolutely nothing” in the past four years? That is about as incorrect of a statement as you can make on the subject.
Edited 2007-10-26 12:58
In the past four years, Novell has done the following:
-Ported NCP to linux
-Ported NSS to linux
So what? Porting stuff to Linux doesn’t amount to getting anything done to arrest the haemorrhaging of Netware customers. It isn’t magically going to make things happen and move them forwards.
-Ported eDirectory to linux(cross platform enabled to span over NetWare, Linux, and Windows)
Why is it cross-platform with Windows? I thought Novell were selling me something that was better? You see, this is where Novell fails. Would people like to have choice and see Exchange run on Linux? Yes. Is it going to happen? No. Microsoft doesn’t compromise on this stuff, which is how they pull sales of Outlook, Exchange and Windows servers along.
-Ported GroupWise to linux(cross platform enabled to span over NetWare, Linux, and Windows)
See above. Groupwise is dead Novell. Do yourself a favour and start using Kolab or OpenGroupware or something like that so people actually know about what it is that you use.
-Built the next generation Zen platform on linux
Quite frankly, I have not been impressed with Zenworks. As far as I can tell, much of what Novell have been doing is writing stuff in .Net and then assuming it can just be ported to Linux using Mono. I don’t call that making Linux a first-class citizen.
Most OpenSuse users’ experience of Zenworks and Novell’s enterprise tools has been less than perfect, shall we say, just so others know what I might be talking about.
-Ported NDPS/iPrint to linux
Yay! At best I can do everything I did before.
-Rebuilt part(server.exe) of NetWare to be virtual machine aware.
Wow. There’s no pretty, easy to use management tools, nothing unifying them together, nothing built first on Linux and no one in the open source community can contribute or test any of this stuff, or even know about it. Ergo, Novell is out of the loop in the wider open source world.
-Ported DNS/DHCP directory integrated services to linux.
We already have them ;-).
None of this stuff is unified, and in particular, none of this stuff is unified with what is happening in the Linux and open source world since, Novell doesn’t get open source. No one using your average Linux distribution is aware of any of this stuff, let alone using it.
Besides, don’t just listen to me. Look at Novell’s revenue and bottom line. It isn’t working.
Edited 2007-10-26 13:39
The biggest reason for this in my opinion is because Microsoft doesn’t have to. They basically set their own rules within reason.
Dead? Tell that to the active developers and all the customers who actually use groupwise. Kolab, OpenXchange, OpenGroupware, none of these come close to GroupWise’s market imprint. That would be a very poor decision by Novell to scrap GroupWise.
What does mono have to do with Zen 10?
As far as eDirectory enabled services, iManager is that tool. You can criticize the tool, but you can’t say it doesn’t exist.
Not integrated into the directory services, however.
It’s more unified than you realize. It certainly needs work(specifically the GroupWise tools), but you don’t need to do anything at the command line if you don’t want to.
You’re spot on, no one using your average linux distro is aware of any of this stuff. However, it’s not because it isn’t open source, it’s because your average linux joe doesn’t need a groupware package, directory services, directory service enabled printing/dhcp/dns, heavy duty workstation and policy management services.
Trust me brother, Novell can be ripped for plenty, particularly their lackluster sales division and their non existent marketing division. In my opinion, most of their woes are due to these parts of the business. You can even rip some of the technology. However, back to your comment, you said they have done nothing in the four years. Regardless of what you think of their development of products and services and what impact they have, it is an irrefutable fact that they have continued to develop and progress their technology over the past four years.
The biggest reason for this in my opinion is because Microsoft doesn’t have to. They basically set their own rules within reason.
Novell doesn’t have to either. They’re selling something that will work, and continue to work, on a platform where they have some say. I can’t see the point of installing eDirectory on a platform where Active Directory already exists, and most organisations can see that paradox. eDirectory is just a management tool for AD.
I mean hell – Novell think they have to give you a choice of databases with Zenworks as well, including SQL Server………. Nice one Novell.
Dead? Tell that to the active developers and all the customers who actually use groupwise.
The last two developers and customers using it may not believe that, but it’s true.
OpenXchange, OpenGroupware, none of these come close to GroupWise’s market imprint.
Compared to Exchange, no one has any clue what Groupwise is. No one using Kolab, OpenGroupware or Zimbra, which are far more widespread generally than Groupwise, have any clue what Groupwise is nor why they should use it. It’s a stagnant and huge piece of software that has gone, and is continuing to go, nowhere. It’s not contributing anything to Novell.
Point is, its usage is not going up and is not likely to.
What does mono have to do with Zen 10?
Zenworks for Linux (client anyway) is supposedly written with Mono, but really, it’s just the .Net Windows stuff ported over.
As far as eDirectory enabled services, iManager is that tool. You can criticize the tool, but you can’t say it doesn’t exist.
It’s disjointed, not integrated with the tools of other products like MMC is and is not integrated with Novell’s desktop of choice on their servers as MMC is. You see, that’s what I’m talking about. Novell are just not organised, don’t integrate things together and don’t have an overall technical strategy from the top down.
This is what has killed Novell, and other Microsoft competitors – because it isn’t just them.
Not integrated into the directory services, however.
Then why didn’t Novell integrate this stuff into existing projects rather than porting stuff they didn’t need to do, increasing complexity? Linux isn’t just a free platform you can dump proprietary stuff on. You have to get how you can use open source development and existing software if you want to survive.
However, it’s not because it isn’t open source, it’s because your average linux joe doesn’t need a groupware package, directory services, directory service enabled printing/dhcp/dns, heavy duty workstation and policy management services.
Tell that to people who are using the free, standard software available in every Linux distro and not Novell’s. If Novell wants to be a Linux distributor, they have to respect the open source software people are already using.
Regardless of what you think of their development of products and services and what impact they have, it is an irrefutable fact that they have continued to develop and progress their technology over the past four years.
You can work on an awful lot of things, but the bottom line is it isn’t stopping the haemorrhaging of customers and it isn’t increasing their revenue. That’s the bottom line.
Edited 2007-10-26 17:18
Huh? eDirectory is a multi master directory service. So is AD for the most part. They’re peers technically.
GroupWise is #3 in market share for groupware behind Exchange and Notes. I’ve yet to see anything written otherwise.
I’ll disagree with that. I think the business has failed the technology, not the other way around. Novell’s software is fairly easy and any sys admin worth their pay should be able to handle it as easily as Windows. Novell has hurt itself by not being able to sell or market the products mostly because they won’t rather than they can’t.
I don’t think you quite understand the technical issue with this. They integrated it into the directory service because it’s a fully functional multi master directory service. There is no proper open source equivalent. You don’t need it if you just have a linux box serving up dynamic ip addresses or acting as name servers. If you want the fault tolerance that your directory service provides, plus the ability to manage it from a common tool(iManager) then you integrate it in.
You didn’t respond to my point. Show me an open source developer who needs or even hacks against any of that type of “enterprise” level software. Open source is not always the panacea for all situations.
If you want to run a directory server, you can run eDirectory for free up to a quarter million objects I believe. However, if you need a directory service, you’re probably paying for it directly or through support pricing anyway.
To reiterate, Novell’s upper level management, sales, and marketing has failed the technology. The technology has not failed them. Can Novell do a better job with the technology? Absolutely. I can’t find any piece of software that can’t use updates or improvement. But our main disagreement hinges on me blaming the management/sales/marketing, and you blaming the technology.
Huh? eDirectory is a multi master directory service. So is AD for the most part. They’re peers technically.
You’re missing the point. In most companies, because of Windows, Active Directory is already a prerequisite. Bringing eDirectory in is just an over-arching tool to manage and synchronise with Active Directory.
GroupWise is #3 in market share for groupware behind Exchange and Notes. I’ve yet to see anything written otherwise.
In the so-called enterprise world, Exchange is first, Notes is a long, long way behind and Groupwise is a long, long, long, long way behind that. Point: It is not going to catch up with Notes, and certainly not Exchange, as it is and keep itself viable. What they need is to get people using it, or using what they’re using.
Novell’s software is fairly easy and any sys admin worth their pay should be able to handle it as easily as Windows. Novell has hurt itself by not being able to sell or market the products mostly because they won’t rather than they can’t.
Novell have made a lot of technical blunders, as well as the sales and marketing ones. So many products are discontinued, renamed, patches are poorly implemented, service packs are late and difficult to install….. I could go on. It’s a sign of a company not sure of what it’s doing.
I don’t think you quite understand the technical issue with this. They integrated it into the directory service because it’s a fully functional multi master directory service. There is no proper open source equivalent.
Red Hat Directory Service (Fedora Directory Server) is. Red Hat committed to GPLing that when they took it over, and they did. That’s what I use myself at the moment on a few small implementations where it’s not reasonable to pay Red Hat money (CentOS), and where Red Hat would not benefit at all. It’s enough that I’m using it. It’s a tad rough around the edges in places, but it’s not as bad as I thought (and it’s basically iPlanet, so it’s got a lineage).
On bigger projects where they’ll be in a position to pay good money, because I’m familiar with RHDS, guess what I’ll probably be using? Guess what I might be using if Novell had the same open source philosophy? Even though I know a few of our clients who are big Novell users, I can’t imagine a situation now where we’d use Novell software ourselves because we just can’t pick it up and run with it.
There are also other benefits in building up an installed base like that. People are used to your software, and also, more systems are compatible with your software. Microsoft themselves know the benefits of a certain amount of piracy. With open source software, no one has to pirate anything.
You didn’t respond to my point. Show me an open source developer who needs or even hacks against any of that type of “enterprise” level software.
It’s not just about hacking. It’s about the wider benefits. As I’ve said above, getting more people using your software who wouldn’t have bought it anyway can be enough of a benefit. Heaven knows, Novell needs that. That’s what Novell certainly doesn’t understand. Look at software like Qt. I’m sure Trolltech have got tons of customers through knowing about Qt through KDE, and none of them will have contributed to Qt and few will have contributed to KDE.
Linux itself could be considered ‘enterprise level’. Not so long ago, RAID and volume management software was considered enterprise level.
If you want to run a directory server, you can run eDirectory for free up to a quarter million objects I believe.
No distro is going to get that into a repository ready for usage so people can get in there and use it though. Novell are terrified as a proprietary company would be, and they don’t see the benefits as an open source company would – especially a company who’s revenues are declining from their traditional products, and whose software is now familiar to so few people.
But our main disagreement hinges on me blaming the management/sales/marketing, and you blaming the technology.
I blame both. Much of the technology is good, but some other bone-headed technology decision shoots it down.
It’s not a prerequisite, it’s a natural extension of the OS. Exchange makes it a prerequisite. eDirectory can synchronize with AD, or just take it’s place completely if you already have an existing eDir tree and you don’t want to screw around with AD. AD is far less flexible than eDir and tied to the operating system.
Other than Security Manager which was a business deal went sour with Astaro who broke the fine print of the deal, Novell hasn’t discontinued any products that weren’t at end of life. They’re even kept BorderManager going. They have changed names of products, but that’s a fairly minor gripe, and frankly one that falls at the feet of marketing. What service packs are difficult to install? I’ve had my share of SP issues, but certainly no more than any other piece of software I’ve had to upgrade.
I can’t disagree with most of what you said there, however my comment was within the context of those services and I was not aware that you can work them into RHDS like you can with eDir. I can’t comment much on RHDS. I do plan on giving it a go on CentOS once I finally get my new work laptop that I can run VMs on.
Maybe so. Open sourcing eDirectory is a large task. Between 3rd party code, RSA bits, and other encryption bits, it’s a very large undertaking. I’m not sure if the value is there. Although, I’m curious to know if it has ever been discussed at Novell.
I agree for the most part. I just weight the blame away from the technology heavier than you.
Quite frankly, I have not been impressed with Zenworks.
Quite frankly, you haven’t really used it. I can’t speak about Zenworks-for-Linux, which I hear exists, but Zenworks on for netware 5.x/6.x managing Windows clients is simply unbeatable, indispensable and zenworks for servers is no slouch either.
And about groupwise… maybe it’s not perfect, but if your network is built around eDirectory it is the best thing going.
Also, do not underestimate directory integrated services.
Quite frankly, you haven’t really used it. I can’t speak about Zenworks-for-Linux
Since the original post was about building Zenworks on Linux, yes, that’s what I was talking about.
which I hear exists, but Zenworks on for netware 5.x/6.x managing Windows clients is simply unbeatable
My advice? Stay on 6.5.
And about groupwise… maybe it’s not perfect, but if your network is built around eDirectory it is the best thing going.
The problem is, most networks aren’t built around eDirectory, they’re built around Active Directory, since it is a prerequisite of managing Windows. Most are using Exchange.
Also, do not underestimate directory integrated services.
I don’t, which is why most Linux server installations hit a brick wall. The vast majority aren’t going to buy Novell’s software on top. Either you get your hands dirty with OpenLDAP, which doesn’t have a decent, default installation anywhere, or you get your hands just slightly less dirty with Red Hat Directory Server (Fedora Directory Server), which again, doesn’t have a decent default installation anywhere. Additionally, very little is integrated with it until you go and do it yourself.
I agree that it is a problem that openldap and other free directories are close to useless, given the amount of work it takes to make them do useful things.
It is not, however, necessary to use activedirectory to manage Windows. eDirectory works just fine–even better, in my opinion.
I think Novell could make a compelling case for itself if it could start with a Linux base, add open source services modified to be tied tightly in to eDir and sell them bundled together that way (without the option to buy them separately, preferably).
They wont, o course, because they’re Novell and dropping balls is what they do best.
It is not, however, necessary to use activedirectory to manage Windows. eDirectory works just fine–even better, in my opinion.
If you want to use things like group policy, Active Directory is a must. Given that prerequisite, all eDirectory end up being is a management tools to synchronise with AD.
This will only change until Samba 4 comes on stream, and that will be a while.
You don’t need AD to manage group policies. You can do that fine with eDirectory as the back end. That’s where Zenworks comes into play.
You don’t need AD to manage group policies. You can do that fine with eDirectory as the back end. That’s where Zenworks comes into play.
You need the Novell client on Windows to get this up and running properly through Zenworks (or you need an existing AD installation), and you won’t be able to have the full features of GP unless you use Active Directory. Point is, unless you’re using AD then there’s no point in using GP. That’s the situation that eDirectory finds itself in on many networks these days.
Edited 2007-10-29 14:32
You don’t need the Novell client software, and as far as I know you’re not losing anything with group policies.
Where do you get your information?
First hand experience tells me you are mistaken Zenworks does Windows group policies just fine, in many cases better (read: more smoothly, fewer weird issues) than AD. It’s not perfect, no, but I assure you there *is* a point to GPs with Zenworks without AD.
If you want to use things like group policy, Active Directory is a must.
Ah, no. I’ve used eDir and group policies in a completely AD-free environment. It actually works much better that way.
“””
“””
There’s a fair amount of truth to that.
Oh well… if worse comes to worst, they can always get a seasonal job at Times Square.
How about funding REALLY SMART PEOPLE like Federico:
http://www.gnome.org/~federico/
Or giving Miguel a platform to stand on and bring C# to Linux? Say what you want about mono being evil, but the part that is ECMA compliant would not be where it is without a corporate sponsor like Novell.
Hmmmmmm maybe open sourcing the code to netmail (and admittingly killing the project) as Hula which has forked to bongo (http://www.bongo-project.org)
What about Tango, http://www.betterdesktop.org, Michael Meeks who runs a good chunk of the non-Sun controlled friendly OpenOffice fork http://go-oo.org ?
Maybe it doesn’t matter that their suse engineers have done a lot of work on projects like Samba or the Linux kernel helping the world? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Alkml.org+%28~*~…
segedunum, a lot of your comments are very controversial and quite good actually. This was not one of them. I could go on for hours about good OR bad things that Novell has done. Don’t blindly hate someone because they are trying to make their customers money although I agree they are doing it in a very braindumb way.
How about funding REALLY SMART PEOPLE like Federico:
http://www.bongo-project.org)
Netmail was essentially useless to Novell, and so they dumped the source. There’s nothing in there that matters to Novell, so don’t expect any two-way contributions from Novell and the community like in most successful projects.
What about Tango, http://www.betterdesktop.org, Michael Meeks who runs a good chunk of the non-Sun controlled friendly OpenOffice fork http://go-oo.org ?
Desktop stuff isn’t making them any money. It’s good for us that they’re doing it, but ultimately it must be viable. They haven’t got the basics right first.
segedunum, a lot of your comments are very controversial and quite good actually. This was not one of them. I could go on for hours about good OR bad things that Novell has done.
That’s not what I’m saying. The point I’m making, with respect to the article, is that all this isn’t making any headway in terms of their revenue and market share with respect to their biggest competitor – Microsoft and Windows. Anything else isn’t the bottom line. That’s actually bad for the Linux and the wider open source community.
Don’t blindly hate someone because they are trying to make their customers money…
Are they?
Ok fair enough. I took your parent posting completely wrong as a “It is cool to bash Novell” rant. Let me apologize for that.
Novell getting in bed with the devil has alienated them from the community, but gained them many ignorant customers. Many of those customers are afraid of Microsoft’s saber rattling and shy away from Redhat for that very reason.
The technical wing of Novell (SUSE Labs and the Ximian Monkeys) developed the right OSS mentality while the upper management / business side of them is stuck in the days of old. The clash of ideas here will likely end up making them a great buyout target. Their Unix IP is one heck of a weapon in the current market.
If Microsoft trys Oracle-style force takeover tactics and it is good for the investor’s bottom-line, Novell is through.
When Microsoft is involved, there is always a nefarious reason.
Please name one thing they have done honestly.
This article, sad to say is not exactly news. This has been reported in many other channels. You are looking for a conspiracy where none exists.
That would be easier to swallow if the ad/article in question wasn’t covered in MS ads. I don’t think it is so much a conspiracy as it is MS just up to their old tricks of purchasing lip service.
Anyone half in tune to the market would have told you that as businesses finished migrating to Linux from Unix, sales would slow down. What is so difficult to understand about this.
You cant accurately determine the market share by sales of an OS, when you can get that OS for free. What is so difficult to understand about that?
Don’t get me wrong…it is possible that Linux adoption could be slowing, but trying to convince IT people to take MS’s word for it could very well be an exercise in futility.
Edited 2007-10-26 20:41
Look at it this way: Who is going to pay for Linux ads? Look, the original poster was correct. You’re looking for dirty tricks when, in fact, unbridled over-optimism is the enemy here. People mistakenly thought that growth in the Linux market was coming at the expense of Microsoft; however, in fact, what’s happened here is exactly what the article says: Shops running expensive proprietary Unix versions moved to lower-cost Linux distros. When this migration started to dry up, Linux adoption was bound to suffer.
The vast majority of organizations deploying Linux are commercial in nature and obtain their OS preinstalled when they purchase hardware; in addition, those same organizations are getting support contracts at the same time. This is reality. So, in fact while not perfect, hardware deployments track closely to OS market share. You may not like that, but it’s true.
IT people don’t need to take *anyone’s* word for it. They know their own needs. Those needs are reflected in these latest sales statistics — and they show that Linux deployments have reached a saturation point. The only way for them to continue growing is to move into markets which are currently dominated by Windows (CRM, etc).
all Microsoft needs to do is fend off commercial linux vendors like redhat. If they can do that, there is very little chance that linux could promote itself on its own. Linux doesn’t have a “Steve Jobs”
I don’t mean to devalue your super-slueth’ness, but it’s not exactly a surprise that he works for ziff davis. From the very article that was posted:
Copyright (c)1996-2007 Ziff Davis Enterprise Inc. All Rights Reserved. eWEEK and Spencer F. Katt are trademarks of Ziff Davis Enterprise, Inc
I mean, thanks for the insight, but we can all read the copyright information on the bottom.
As for the merits of eWeek, back when I used to browse it (which has been a few years), they covered *nix technologies more than they did Windows technologies.
Heh… well somehow I had not seen the disclaimer. Funny. I must be overworked.
Anyways, the “articles” is more paid advertisement than anything else. One thing is however correct: Migrating to Linux servers can not continue forever as there is only a certain number of machines running. So no surprise here. But interpreting the slowdown of Linux migration as a loss of market share to Windows-Servers is not really a sign of intelligence.
But interpreting the slowdown of Linux migration as a loss of market share to Windows-Servers is not really a sign of intelligence.
How many Windows to Linux migrations do you see on average, and when a new server is required how many go out and buy a Linux one in your average company network?
If you’re not moving forwards then you’re going backwards.
In the California State University system, we have a system wide agreement with Dell for servers. We also have a system wide agreement with Microsoft for Windows. The Dell boxes come pre-configured with Windows per the agreement.
As you can see, no matter how many times we’ve used FreeBSD or Linux (quite frequently), Windows get the sale’s credit.
You second sentence here is irrelevant. Neither Redhat or Novell sell Microsoft Windows based products so increased sales here doesn’t tell you anything about server market share.
Also, Dell’s Linux sales may be selling at a rate out pacing the increase in Windows machine sales but why would this be surprising? They’ve only been selling Linux for a shot time, and Vista for almost a year now.
They never tell you exactly how they reached their conclusions. It’s always “just take our word for it: we have real experts and did a real study.”
It’s not just msft v linux either, salary surveys, and the like are equally unsupported.
If I dont’ have to show you my research, I could easially “prove” that linux is gaining or msft, or that linux is losing ground to msft.
For all of you that always see the boogey man (Microsoft) behind everything, one thing you can’t deny is the company earnings. They came out yesterday and were outstanding. Whether or not you like the OS, remember boys, it is just an OS not your religion, MS is making money for investors like me. It doens’t matter what the news is, you guys always call it FUD. Boys, does it feel cool to write that word while you sit alone in your little room? Have you seen Dell release any sales numbers for the Linux boxes yet? If they were great, you know for sure it would be news! Listen boys, I use Vista, Open Suse, etc. They all have many problems, but last time I tried to load Open Suse 10.3 I had to reformat my hard drive, and Ubuntu would crash on me, and I am good at what I do. So boys, your religion is not ready for prime time yet. And Vista had been on my PC since it came out and no problems yet.
OK boys, start your shouting.
Thank you very much.
Fool, Technical superiority, freedom and ethics does not equal religion.
You may have short term interests in financial stock shares and in reports like these but it does not serve us and it does not serve you.
Does anyone here still believe what MS is saying related to “facts from experts”?
Edited 2007-10-26 05:53
Not me.
…when it says the survey was done by IDC. Well, actually I didnt but I should have since it turns out that “experts” means a whole 4 people, of whom one is from MS and 2 from IDC.
Surely the best and most exhaustive selection of experts possible.
Edited 2007-10-26 05:58
Maybe what IDC are saying *might* be true. However IDC are just looking at the operating systems shipped on x86 servers. This doesn’t mean as much as you’d think since it’s nice and easy to remove Windows and install Linux, or a BSD, or Solaris or something. It is also only x86 servers. It also ignores, as the article suggests, virtualization.
Further I don’t really believe IDC could possibly document every sale of every x86 server in the world. I’d would further like to ask IDC how many servers are sold without any operating system at all since many choose to run a Unix that you simply can’t “buy”.
Red Hat and Sun’s results seem to suggest the opposite of what IDC is saying. More and more people are buying Red Hat Enterprise subscriptions and Sun seem to say the same thing about their Solaris services. Is this not a better indicator of success of the Linux and Unix “market”? (As if we cared about competing with Windows Server anyway?)
Edited 2007-10-26 06:09
“This doesn’t mean as much as you’d think since it’s nice and easy to remove Windows and install Linux, or a BSD, or Solaris or something.”
Firstly very few business does this, if any. Don’t mistake figures to consumer markets, this is purely business customers. And most business customers buy package deals, they have option to buy Linux with server. Maybe reason is like article says that business consumers aren’t very pleased (or the lack knowledge) how to use Linux in other roles than just web server. Also your last claim might be true, but you fail to see that server markets are growing. Sameway Apple might increase there sale by 3% but lose total market since total growth is 5%.
… I can’t talk about other people, but all the servers we buy come OS-less.
We add RHEL/CentOS and, grrr, Windows later. (We have site license for those).
… and I’m not talking about a couple of servers – I’m talking about hundreds.
Granted, my case can be radically different then others, but in general I don’t trust surveys that are built around shady foundations.
– Gilboa
I know we just bought a new HP blade solution and got VMWare ESX for the 8 blades. Hmm… Linux (for all intensive purposes) x8.
I can’t help but think they’re missing a large chunk of the market by not taking into account the systems shipping without an OS at all. Most large organizations buy their Windows licenses and/or install their own OS separate from the buying the physical machines. This is especially true with virtualization being used more and more.
Wow. *If* it’s true, that’s a lot folks, no matter how you cut it. And no mention of FreeBSD at all…
Anyone cares to provide a different (credible, of course) source of statistics?
Wow. *If* it’s true, that’s a lot folks, no matter how you cut it. And no mention of FreeBSD at all…
Anyone cares to provide a different (credible, of course) source of statistics?
Here’s another opinion, coming directly from beloved EU:
At the start of the commission’s antitrust investigation in 1999, the agency said Microsoft’s share of the worldwide work-group server market was between 35 percent and 40 percent. That share rose to about 60 percent between 2001 and 2003. The current share is about 75 percent, the commission said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/308645_msfteu23.html
So.. I’d say, number is correct.. give or take some..
And that is exactly why EU forced MS to “open” its protocols.
This could be true. But i belive that after some time, when management tools with the style of Active Directory, Group Policy etc… are stock standard for linux, things will change. I have some bias, but i think that Ubuntu will get this going well before the rest if looking at their desktop distro is anything to go by.
But i belive that after some time, when management tools with the style of Active Directory, Group Policy etc… are stock standard for linux, things will change.
You say this as if producing graphical management tools is easy. Guess what? There’s nothing around.
I have some bias, but i think that Ubuntu will get this going well before the rest if looking at their desktop distro is anything to go by.
Ubuntu haven’t got a snowball in hell’s chabce of doing this. They’ve produced nothing approaching MMC, and quite frankly, their GUI tools are not up to the job. If Red Hat hasn’t been able to do it after a decade, I fail to see what Ubuntu are doing differently.
Edited 2007-10-26 12:01
You say this as if producing graphical management tools is easy.
In my opinion, it shouldn’t be too hard. It’s just that the linux crew believes that nobody should use GUI admin tools, which is STUPID.
In my opinion, it shouldn’t be too hard.
It is hard, because no one has even been able to do this on desktops. It also shows a true ignorance for what’s involved that I see displayed by an awful lot of Linux distribution companies. I thought they might have learned by now.
It’s just that the linux crew believes that nobody should use GUI admin tools, which is STUPID.
I hear this silly, silly argument time and again. If you believe that pointing people to the command line negates having good graphical tools then I’m afraid that is one of the primary reasons why there is more than an element of truth in the article. There’s no reason why headless servers cannot be run, with a management framework to enable GUI management elsewhere. There is no such framework, and no such GUI tools.
In ‘enterprise’ type circles, management tools that people can pick up and use are absolutely everything. Squealing ‘command line’ is going to get you no response other than people buying more Windows servers.
Edited 2007-10-26 13:35
In enterprise circles, change management and automation is absolutely everything nowadays. GUI interfaces make that hard if not impossible. If I can store my entire configuration environment in a version control system, have those configurations applied automatically when they change, and have an audit trail of who, when and what changed, that is far more important that having idiot box GUI tools.
At any rate, this is all a red herring. There are GUI/Server automation tools for Linux from commercial vendors.
http://www.bladelogic.com
http://www.opsware.com
There are GUI/Server automation tools for Linux from commercial vendors.
From Linux vendors? No, they’re not good enough. From other vendors? No one wants to have to buy additional software for what should be there to start off with.
Having everything and the kitchen sink included and integrated to the point of being inseparable is the Microsoft way. UNIX admins usually already have their tool kit, and they don’t want a vendor’s pre-integrated crap getting in the way.
With Windows, the operating system is already so expensive that one can’t afford to buy anything else. With Linux or BSD, one can actually afford to pick best of breed management solutions.
With Puppet or CfEngine, even the management solution doesn’t cost anything to acquire. If these systems are just too much for you to comprehend, you still have all that money you didn’t spend on software licenses to hire competent staff.
Having everything and the kitchen sink included and integrated to the point of being inseparable is the Microsoft way. UNIX admins usually already have their tool kit, and they don’t want a vendor’s pre-integrated crap getting in the way.
There are ways and means of doing this, and telling us all that the Unix way is the best is why Linux and Unix usage and share has stalled in the face of Windows Server.
With Windows, the operating system is already so expensive that one can’t afford to buy anything else. With Linux or BSD, one can actually afford to pick best of breed management solutions.
No one is going to go out and do that for stuff that should be bundled with the OS instead. That’s incredibly silly. Faced with buying Unix or Linux and then having to buy management tools, and buying Windows and not having to, they’ll buy Windows.
I’m afraid this attitude is Microsoft’s greatest ally.
Ever heard of things like cfEngine, Puppet or proprietary offerings such as IBM Tivoli?
Windows is a “business appliance”, it is not a “true” OS like Unix, Linux, and the BSDs are. If you want to build solutions from scratch, from innovative network technologies to filers and routers, you use Unix, BSD, or Linux. Unfortunately, what the world mostly needs are business appliances to run their spreadsheets, word processing, ERP, groupware, POS, etc. And in this regard, Windows is king and it will continue its marketshare growth. I’ve been in this industry for too long and I know what solutions Windows specifically solves and why business loves it.
“Margaret Lewis, the director of commercial solutions for AMD in Austin, Texas, has also noticed the slowdown in Linux growth over the past few quarters.
In 2000, Windows comprised about half of the server operating system market, followed by Unix and Netware at about 17 percent each and Linux reaching towards 10 percent, she said, noting that today Windows owns about 70 percent, Linux about 20 percent, with Unix below 10 percent and Netware barely registering.
“Looking at these large operating system market swings, you could draw the conclusion that Linux has gotten the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in terms of migration,” Lewis said.
“Without the larger pool of Unix and NetWare users who are ripe for migration, there is not quite the level of fuel. You could assume that Linux is now ready to settle down to a more regular growth curve representative of a more mature technology.” ”
I think the above quote pretty much says it all. No reason to get emotional and hyperbolic
And perhaps this will be another kick in the pants to get the arrogant devs to just sit down and realize that when the users complain, or things are overly complex, that it’s a good time to fix things up instead of flaming the users and ignoring their requests and bug reports. I don’t know why users are treated like some sort of evil fungus that needs to be eradicated.
In my own work, when I write internal apps for others to use, I get feedback, not as much as I’d like, and I take it seriously. If somebody says “I don’t like how xyz happens when I do abc” or even “it’d be nice if it could do X”, then I take it seriously. Maybe the exact fix that they suggest is incorrect, but it means that there’s something non-obvious or inefficient in my interface design, and it needs to be fixed. The best programs are ones where you don’t feel like you are having to do more work than necessary, or that it feels overly complex and hard to learn…or on the flip side, overly limiting. Firefox is a good example of a good program, and there was an article a little while ago about how much time the lead developers spent considering features and UI design, and it shows. I rarely feel frustrated when using Firefox, or configuring it.
Anyways, the point of all this is, it’s really time for Linux developers to start being more serious. I don’t care about Joe Itchscratcher who is writing text editor #42. I’m talking about the devs working on the big flagship projects. Too many times developers say the users are stupid, and close bugs with WONTFIX, or they just ignore the complaints as if they are not valid. EVERY complaint is valid in some way. Even if you are working as a volunteer, it’s good to have the attitude of “yes, I’m spending more time working on some uninteresting but, BUT I’m helping this piece of software be a really good piece of software, and I’m making some people happy, and I’m furthering the community that has given me these projects to work on”.
BTW, I’m not saying all Linux devs are like this. But there are enough, and there’s not enough focus on quality and tightness in free software. And that’s where Linux is going to really start hurting as people really begin to demand higher quality.
Ever tryed submitting a Windows bug?
Yeah, and it’s not that hard, actually.
The person who replied sort of illustrates the point you are making, “Ever tried submitting a Windows bug?”
That sort of reasoning says, “if Windows is difficult then it is ok that we are difficult as well.” Exactly your point.
I recently made this comment in a LUG and I was shot down and flammed… I even to this day have people sending me emails on how wrong I am!
What I see is a generation divide. There are those who grew up in the late 90’s and were part of the Open Source scene. They were the Microsoft haters, and made Open Source great. But in the last two years things have changed. Look at the netcraft studies. I think the next generation of Open Source developers don’t exist!
The next generation of Open Source developers are in fact Open Source users and rabid Open Source defenders, but they don’t actually cut code that helps the overall system. It is hurting Open Source. And while I doubt Open Source is dead the high water mark has been reached.
Microsoft had stellar earnings, and I predict this marks the turning point in Microsoft…
I’m in ur nuwz – warping ur trooth!
Why have people modded this joker up? This isn’t Digg for god’s sake!
cause in these discussions they fail to mod smart comments and takes either the dumb or the commercial ones.
Because he is not a joker.
dylansmrjones is a regular with a very good posting style and the posting you were replying to tells us quite nicely how much he values the eweek article, just by commenting on it in a language level matching the one from the article (hollow analyst blahblah vs. hollow leet speak blahblah)
whereever i’ve worked i’ve never seen many windows servers, usually about one per organisation and that’s mainly for exchange and activedirectory.
everything else (webservers, databases etc.) is solaris sparc, although linux x86 is usually the minority – embedded stuff like firewalls.
As far as money is concerned, it is easy enough to track Microsoft sales, less so Linux sales just because some -many?- servers are just free…
Sometimes, you just buy support…or nothing and just multiply or increase your previous deployment.
So, I am very sceptical about these so called studies. But, I am not denying though that for now MS is still very healthy and wealthy.
I just use Linux now and more and more people do it, year after year. This is a FACT and a world trend.
Are these ever going to include deployments of, say, Debian? Before you laugh at me for suggesting that Debian is suitable for use in the “enterprise”, I used to work for a medium sized (UK) ISP who ran most of their infrastructure on Debian.
–Robin
If you think ‘ISP’ means ‘enterprise’, then I think you are mistaken, big time. An ISP is a very network-centric environment. Its much more important to look at what’s running payroll, accounts, stock management and the like. Its easy for tech geeks to focus on web edge things and to some extent file sharing, but manufacturing (such as we have in this country now), distribution and big service industry *core* systems are much more important overall.
I suspect that MS couldn’t care less how many shoestring ISP operations run on Linux or FreeBSD, so long as lots of SAP systems get deployed on SQLServer and Exchange gets deployed.
And you know what? They’re right.
http://dreamhost.com/hosting.html
Operating System Debian Linux
Debian is big in certain places, but it isn’t going to be displacing RHEL or SLES anytime soon. It is however, doing much better than the other two in the embedded world.
I would guess the tables are turning because Windows 2003 surprisingly doesn’t suck.
I would guess the tables are turning because Windows 2003 surprisingly doesn’t suck.
Every Windows since at least 3.1 has been accused of “surprisingly not sucking”.
Every set of figures I’ve seen from the past two years from E.g. Gartner have put Linux at 30-40% and Windows 50-60%, so I’m not going to believe that Linux use has suddenly halved in one year. I am prepared to believe that UNIX to Linux migration has slowed and that Linux server shipments have dropped: but that may simply be that admins and IT managers are either more comfortable with Linux now and are prepared to handle the installation of their preferred distribution themselves. IDC appear make no effort to find out why, so my theory is as good as theirs.
Every set of figures I’ve seen from the past two years from E.g. Gartner have put Linux at 30-40% and Windows 50-60%, so I’m not going to believe that Linux use has suddenly halved in one year.
This data does not track “Linux use”. It tracks “growth”.
Apache vs IIS. This is the Netcraft numbers for october 2007:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/10/11/october_2007_web_serve…
…Apache runs on Windows too
Don’t get me wrong, folks, I love Linux as much as you do, but Linux on the server side can’t just be “more stable”, it needs to add value – something like AD. And email on Linux servers needs cool frontends to EASE administration. Also, Apache could profit from one too.
It’s not enough to be better, you need to have it at a point where a trained monkey with little skill (MCSE) can do it on Linux too. And Linux isn’t there yet…
This is very true. I’ve installed linux server and it didn’t grow in 2006. On the other hand, the Windows server leaks so much ressource, we had to add several disks and RAM so as to make it function. It has grown 75% in Disk space and 200% in RAM. The number of reboot has grown significantly as well. So yes, Windows is growing faster than Linux.
Seriously though, what those number mean? x% grow in what? In price? I don’t believe linux has grown at all.
The fact remains that linux is still more suited for server than Windows. Seriously how many time can you afford to reboot your web server a month?
Windows is not easily administrable at all, especially remotely. Linux is 65.4234% more easy to administer and 325.43% more stable (from a very serious study I published on the web).
Over 2006, linux easyness has increased 78% (from january to january), while Windows’ easyness only increased 14%.
Edited 2007-10-26 10:37
Ignoring for the moment that this was produced by IDC (they generally use revenue as the indicator for market share which is ridiculous, since there is no way that 70% of all servers out there are Windows) I can believe this to be true to a certain extent.
As the great John H. Terpstra talked about in a presentation many years ago, the vast majority of these Linux companies (and certainly the number one and two) believe that they can live in their own little bubble of not competing with Windows and taking the ‘low hanging fruit’ of Unix migrations. They just seem to be terrified of trying to go against Windows Server, and believe that they can retreat into ever smaller niches. This is just silly, quite frankly.
Today, there is no server package that will compete with Windows Server, and Microsoft’s server software, in terms what they do. This is extremely unfortunate, because companies like Red Hat and Novell have everything they need, and give themselves an advantage over the main thing holding Windows Server and software back – idiotic licensing. This is especially the case for small businesses, but in the absence of anything else they get roped into SBS.
While Microsoft is still trying to create a working, headless version of Windows with a half-decent shell, Linux systems already have that, and with a bit of work (DBUS interfaces to lots of software and Ruby scripting, for example) could be made even better. Linux also has what it needs to compete with Windows Server on the graphical administration tools front, but absolutely nothing has been done in the Linux world that is on a par with MMC – and MMC isn’t fantastic in places. YaST is exceptionally poor given how long it has been around, and there’s not much on many other distros that gets anywhere near. Red Hat’s graphical tools are pretty woeful.
On the software applications front, Linux and the open source world has many groupware solutions around as well as stuff for instant messaging, we have a great web server, we have a great great open source database system in Postgres, LDAP and Red Hat Directory Server are around for universal authentication (but they’re still nowhere near straightforward enough to set up), but there’s no unified set of administration tools for this software and no unified authentication in many distros. The whole thing is disjointed enough that people just go to Windows Server, and then get roped into more through the requirements. The Linux world has a good lead in terms of virtualisation, but again, the tools are exceptionally poor. Red Hat and Novell simply cannot come out and produce stuff of the kind of quality that they are doing.
The open source world and Linux distro companies need to wake up and realise what they have, otherwise the future doesn’t look all that great. Don’t talk about the Linux desktop, because if Linux and open source software can’t hold their own in the server world then there is no foundation.
Articles like this never make it very clear that the “server market” they’re talking about are strictly related to commercial sales of server OS’es and *not* about any servers running free OS’es. Considering the Linux “market leader” in such commercial sales is Red Hat and they charge quite a high fee for RHEL, it’s hardly surprising that there was indeed a limit to how much people were willing to spend on server OS’es, especially for Linux variants which generally have the rep of being “free”.
I think it’s quite disingenous to quote just commercial sales figures for server OS’es because I can bet that for every one commercial Linux server OS installed, there’s 10 free Linux server OS’es installed elsewhere, especially for small companies that may not be able to afford the high RHEL fees.
Also don’t forget that some servers “have” to be shipped with Windows 2003 in the same way that desktops “have” to be shipped with Vista (or XP if you’re luckier). So even if you wipe Windows and install Linux, that’s still counted +1 for windows and +0 for Linux server sales…
And how they count it?
Red Hat sells service, not linux alone.
Linux is way cheaper and upgrade is free.
They count several times windows servers as each upgrade generate revenue, while only one Linux installation may (or may not) generate revenue for Red Hat.
At the end of the day, they don’t explain how they calculate their number, so as far as I can say, it’s total crap.
Every HP server we purchase comes blank. We push out the OS we want on it.
For example we buy fully loaded blade enclosures, 16 servers/blades per enclosure all blank. We bought 4 of them in the past 3 months. And then there are the rack servers that come blank.
I think they are cherry picking.
Really, who cares if Microsoft servers are gaining market share? Good for them! The ‘BSDs and Linux provide a good, stable and free OS to those that need it, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.
I’m sorry, but if Windows is winning market share to Linux, is because Linux is NOT providing a good server OS
No one says that the ‘source’ is bad when linux is growing over windows, but when a single report is saying that windows is growing over linux, now the source is not reliable, it sucks, they are wrong …
Nothing new in fact …
Uh yeah, exactly. One source. That’s not reliable regardless of the results.
Being an untrustworthy source doesn’t help either.
Microsoft has group policies which simplify the maintenance of large numbers of PC workstations. I think that Red Hat and Novell have their own solutions for the same problem, but I am not sure. I know that there is an Novell tool, but I am not sure what it does. Perhaps they are not advertised enough, or not easy to use ? Cfengine exists for a long time, but it is not easy to configure.
Couple of years ago major selling point for Microsoft was Office. Now I think it is automated remote administration.
The next thing might be Sharepoint.
Last month this guy wrote an article describing Open Source and, hence, Linux as a “disruptive” force in the IT market “which will drive prices down and force proprietary software vendors to change their business models”. If that happens he won’t get paid for writing FUD. Personally, I’ve spent the last 7 years working pretty much exclusively in Linux and every year I see more job opportunities for my skill set. There have been windows servers at every place I’ve worked, but they were simply because management forced IT to deal with buggy applications like Exchange. Every time a serious application was considered, windows was not the first choice for the platform. Even at this late date windows is still not ready for prime time. Funny how som many “experts” don’t know that.
I can’t speak for an entire industry, but I know the only reason we have a Windows server in our office is because of SQL Server. We have software that requires it. I’d be willing to place a bet that if Windows servers are growing and Linux is slipping it probably has to do more with application requirements over choice (although I know more than a few IT people who are ate up with Windows servers).
However, like he pointed out in the article, you can’t really base the number of actual Linux server running on how many boxes were sold. A hundred companies could have bought a hundred Windows servers, but the may each be running two Linux servers.
You don’t here often “Windows are great”, even from people that use them. Windows are just….Windows. It is always some application that works in Windows only which people like.
Let’s save a lot of time and just comment by number:
1. The data is wrong. Microsoft has paid the article authors to fabricate bogus data.
2. The data is correct but the Linux decrease is temporary. Once we publicize the benefits of Linux servers the trend will reverse.
3. The data is correct which proves Windows users are stupid and Linux users are smart.
This is sad news for Linux. Microsoft’s cash is going to make them a server monopoly as well. Windows isn’t shitty like it used to be, especially the server offering.
There is nothing us *nix supporters can do about it except take it like a man and move on.
screw that we can roll up our sleeves advocate on all fronts, work the bug reports, code if you can, write documentation, learn our trade better than the windows guys, teach new admins unix, and light a fire under our own behinds.
Please ***no more eWeek on OSAlert***!
Their language is unwieldy, and unwieldy enough to cover the truth.
The article skims over bare server shipments, gives misleading comments.
I especially liked Bill Hilfs ‘core print and file servers’. As far as I know most print servers are not actually core, whereas file servers seem to be on Linux everywhere I see. And bought for Linux…
We recently consolidated all our storage onto an EMC fiber channel array with a Linux box running Samba as a NAS “gateway”. This replaced three Windows 2003 file servers.
The Linux box provides access to the file stores through HTTP/DAV/SCP/CIFS/NFSv(3|4). It’s fully integrated with our AD installation through LDAP and Kerberos. The only real disadvantage is the loss of filesystem permission semantics with POSIX ACLs vs NT ACLs; however, it’s still more than workable.
So in our case that’s 3 less Windows servers and 1 additional Linux server (which we didn’t have to buy a new box for). So, I guess Bill is right. Linux server growth is slow ;-).
One aspect of politics that has been extremely annoying seems to be in play here, that is if you do not agree with the news, you shoot the messenger. This article had nothing to do with a “which is better”, simply which in terms of sales holds what market share. I can certainly expect this type of reaction if this was an editorial discussing how much they feel Windows or whatever is better than Linux etc.. But this simply was not the case.
Blind allegiance and faith have never been a positive in anything, whether it be religion or politics. It does not take a fool to realize that for many, Linux has become more than what it really is..software. When people use the terms zealot, fanatic, etc. they are completely correct as these responses have shown a community of individuals who do not care to live in reality.
What this article have been better if it lied and said that Linux had grown when in fact it did not.
Lastly I find this extremely annoying that when ever there is an article that people do not like, the rush to immediately assume bias simply because of advertisements. Should Eweek not accept advertisements from Microsoft? If you think that is the case, you are sadly not ever going to understand. Would Microsoft advertise in Womans Home Journal, or would they advertise in an IT trade journal. Within the first few pages of Information Week and Network Computing I have advertisements for AMD. So then I should I discount the articles that discuss how AMD has grown in market share is just pure AMD propoganda? That is what others simply apply to discount something they do not want to hear. When Hillary Clinton does an ad on CNN, should I simply then ignore any news regarding Barack Obama?
It seems that on the one hand this same group wants Linux to grow, on the other hand they are not accepting the reality of the business world. In the years to come there very well will be both positive and negative news regarding Linux. You have to simply accept the negative as well, otherwise the ignorance will certainly lead to failure.
Lastly, I find it quite embarrassing that on the one hand the same crowd that crys “FUD” at everyone, simply wants to be deceived and lied to. How is the OS suppose to improve? If a company like Red Hat or Novell took this approach of simply ignoring anything that does not paint their product in a glowing light, they would be out of business. Do you honestly believe that these companies are simply going to just wish to ignore this news, or are they going to look at how they can expand their market share.
And FYI, this is NOT to say that the article could be incorrect. Yet nobody in all these posts have shown any other credible source that would indicate the opposite. Instead, it seems people simply do not even want to consider this. What is simply amazing is that in the end this was just another minor little article blown way out of proportion.
And FYI, this is NOT to say that the article could be incorrect. Yet nobody in all these posts have shown any other credible source that would indicate the opposite. Instead, it seems people simply do not even want to consider this. What is simply amazing is that in the end this was just another minor little article blown way out of proportion.
The article is pointing out that Linux is making no headway against Windows Server itself, and the discussions that followed have been trying to ascertain why that is.
Is this news? MS has been saying this for years and it’s something that we all know is true. Windows is “more popular” that linux / Unix / Mac. It would be true even if the original writer wasn’t a cronie for MS. Quite frankly I dont give a rats@ss how successful MS’s marketing is the OS is still crap. Unfortunately there are many MS fanboy’s that call the shots in todays IT infrastructure….