It depends on the capital and support costs.
Windows may be cheaper overall if you need to retrain your support staff and users to use whichever version of Linux and whichever office program suite you use. Training for Ubuntu is not generally transferable to Debian and vice versa. Then retrain them when Linux changes, and this happens (On Ubuntu long term support versions, anyway) at about the same frequency as Windows. I'd say, for a commercial operation, it's pretty much a dead heat.
In industry the support costs of Windows and Linux machines are about the same. It favours Linux if you have a large number of identical machines because it's easier for one Linux sysadmin to service a large number of Linux machines. This difference is likely to pretty much disappear with the next release of Windows.
The real killer is having to support *both* platforms. In general you need Windows for its desktop applications, the Linux equivalents aren't quite ready yet. So if you decide on Linux servers you will need both sets of skills.
That's very important if you have a relatively small IT team. If you have hundreds of them you can afford to split your team into different groups.
The one with the lowest support costs including training.
So why did you say windows was more difficult?
The IT support, who are probably experts in windows and know nothing of linux.
Yes, i said that.
but who is going to prepare the image?
It might, you only need to reboot win7 once during the install BTW.
a bit big for a phone.
The S2 is better than an iPhone and isn't tied to an evil empire like the iPhone.
Oh, that's good. Nearly time to renew!
Hmm. We paid £99 last year and they say it's £109.99 according to the website.
I'd agree if you changed that to "ubuntu vs redhat" - as there are quite a few differences, although thanks to the LSB, a competant RH person should be able to find there way around 80% of ubuntu and vice versa. The odd weirdisms like /etc/sysconfig vs /etc/default - the network config and the package management systems are the most likely to catch the unwary.
But I didn't find yum hard coming back to Centos 5 from Ubuntu/Debian after a period of absence. Even kickstart was much the same as back in RH6.2 (2001 vintage).
debian vs ubuntu are extremely close - at least at the server level. OK, ubuntu uses a lot more Upstart and Debian sticks to init.d/ by default but the files are in the same place for the most part.
I find relatively little changes (in a way that breaks stuff - there may be lots of new features waiting to be taken advantage of) in Ubuntu releases and things like Upstart and apparmour have been introduced gradually.
eg on my latest server build at home, I tried incremental in place upgrades from 8.04->10.04->10.10->11.04 in one series of hits and a very few config files broke (mostly dovecot which whilst bloody good, is famed for constant config changes - and Postgres 8.4 dropped a few config items and barfed. Quickly fixed.
I then decided on a Debian 6.0 install after I blew up the RAID doing something that was asking for trouble (I have backups and I was curious about how it would handle a change of stripe geometry[1])
Debian 6 took pretty much all my Ubuntu 11.04 config and worked.
[1] I was glad I tried - thanks to better MD features and improved XFS support in the recent kernels plus a better choice of stripe width, I quadrupled the speed of my filesystem.Generally in 2 year space linux upgrades, I have found relatively little breaks and a relatively few bits of config need tweaking.
That includes Mandrake 9.1->10.2, Ubuntu 8.04->10.04, Debian 5 -> Debian 6 all of which I've had to handle on a big scale.
Also, the ease of replicating an accross the board set of basic config on a new version (cp -av set-of-config to target) beats the crap out of all versions Windows since 3.1.
Cheers
Tim
What, mine? Did I teach him? Or have we had this conversation before?
Because it takes me at least a day to get a Windows install "right", from the initial, the installation of drivers, the apps, the security patches and several reboots then configuration.
I can do the same on a linux install from cold with no pile-of-config files in a couple of hours. Less than an hour to install and another hour to tweak stuff. An hour alone to a usable laptop full off apps if I skip the tweaking phase.
That's because it's not a phone :)
Of course they are. It's not Windows!
I used OS/2 for a few years when it was a better DOS than DOS and better Windows than Windows. Would I have advised other people to adopt it - no, for just the reason you say, if people have problems with Windows lots of people know what to do.
Same with boilers (to get back on topic) - unless you can fix it yourself, stick to tried and tested models and industry standard control systems.
Is that the free shipping option? I don't know how they do it but Amazon UK are doing free shipping to Australia on orders > £25 for everyone.
That is what is shown on the website, it maybe that it si still the 'offical' price. but they seem to offering a lower price in reality. I've certainly seen the prices I quoted on the Ocado site. and I was emailed last month to say mine was going down
Scarily, dennis is quite close to the mark here. A disturbing number of people in that field know nothing but windows.
Amazon Prime is £49 annually. For that you get next-day shipping on everything, no further charges. Last year I had about 120 deliveries from Amazon, so that worked well.
One local school near here is moving over to Linux and OpenOffice, and they *do* know what they're doing. Exception rather than the rule though.
My wife taught A level computing at a grammar school a little while ago. She put in an entire Linux lab, with server.
The last few installs of Windows (W7) I've done have been pretty much painless, and has needed little intervention. Even the updates etc would get on with it by themsleves if you let it turn on automatic updates. And drivers seems a lot less of an issue now, either what it came with or what appears in windows update seems to do the job well enough generally.
I had more of a problem installing (as in failing) the drivers for the wireless networking when I installed Ubuntu on a laptop here about 12-18 months ago Though I'd agree it's generally very slick nowadays.
Never floated my boat enough to want to make an effort to move us over though. But might put it on a machine that's waiting to be rebuilt, mostly for the kids to use, see what they make of it, and to get them used to suing something different.
Certainly installing the apps it wins hands down in terms of getting up and going straightaway.
Though I suspect that with the iPhone showing the way to the masses we will see some sort of 'App Store' on Windows machines in the future.
Is Becta a rude word round your way?
In the first case above, totally irrelevant, since BECTA no longer exists. And in the second case, there was little money available, hence the Linux solution.
It's also my experience that a majority of people who work professionally supporting Windows actually are very weak on computer theory in general, whereas most *nix professionals know what they are doing.
I'll add to that, before the lynch mob starts, there are a few people who do work with Widnows who are extremely switched on. One guy I used to work with. But he ran linux at home on suns and PCs.
Perhaps I should revise that to professionals who only do windows seem weak to me.
There, that should start a flameware - bring it on, I'm in the mood (broken train) ;->
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