Linux Cheaper Than Windows

[Brett_Tabke]

[newsfactor.com...]

In a new survey of I.T. organizations, respondents claim that recent developments in Linux have eased management complexity and lowered the price associated with running the operating system and its related software .

The results contradict some Microsoft claims that Linux's total cost of ownership is higher than Windows.

The report was sponsored by Open Source Development Labs and member company Levanta, and undertaken by Enterprise Management Associates.

[StupidScript]

The only claim that MS' "Get the Facts" effort relied on, aside from weird performance claims, was that the *talent* required to maintain a 'Nix system was less available and therefore more expensive than what was available to maintain a Winbox.

Now that more IT folks have dipped their toes into 'Nix, and the distros are getting friendlier, that claim is going down the tubes.

A single factor, licensing fees, will be the dominant issue facing IT departments in the near future ... and MS will lose big on that end.

All it will take is for a company to note how much time is spent patching, rebooting and remirroring their Winboxes and paying for upgrades and compare that to the uptime and cost of the 'Nix boxes.

[drhowarddrfine]

Someone said on his blog that he couldn't understand why they were paying MS for support yet they needed all these admins running around to keep things running while he was the only Unix admin for the same number of computers on the Unix side.