Comments on: Linux growth tied to personnel issues

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:00:36 +0000

Indeed. Linux is just another variety of Unix. Solaris 10 is actually nicer than it’s given credit for, and Red Hat doesn’t run our apps nearly as well on the X4600s we have running Sol10 (we tried). But I can’t think of a Solaris admin I know (and I know a fair few) who wouldn’t happily deploy Linux anywhere it’s cost and performance effective.

By: sgtrock

sgtrock — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:40:53 +0000

It is probably people who are holding up an adoption of Linux, but it is absolutely a nonsensical conclusion to say that it is the UNIX administrators who are dragging their feet. As has been pointed out in other forums, any UNIX administrator has had to learn multiple versions over his or her career. From that point of view, Linux is just another in a long series with its own quirks. No big deal at all.

Microsoft Windows administrators, OTOH, face a completely different OS with very little similarity to what they already know. In my experience, they tend far more than their UNIX counterparts to cling to the familiar at the expense of their employers’ true needs.

By: Danby

Danby — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:02:22 +0000

This is ridiculous. As a UNIX administrator with 24 years in this business, I know the UNIX staff. No UNIX technical people are afraid of Linux. Anywhere. Most run Linux on their desktop machines, when the IT policies allow it. Most UNIX shops have dozens, if not hundreds of Linux boxes, handling middleware, network infrastructure and file sharing tasks.

The reluctance to deploy Linux comes from two places. The first is management. These are like the management at my former employer, who would rather run an application on a ten-year-old installation of SCO Open Server than spend a week or two porting it to Linux. efficeincy and reliability be damned, as long as I can renew my support contract.

The other source of reluctance to move from UNIX to Linux is the fact that Linux doesn’t scale as well. Small and middle-sized apps, requiring a few processors do very well on Linux. Petabyte databases, applications running into the millions of lines of code, machines with more than eight processors all turn out to be less reliable and often much slower under Linux than UNIX.

By: required

required — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:47:54 +0000

What is a “server revenue”? Does that mean computers purchased with an OS pre-installed?

If so, how many of them will have the OS replaced with Linux as soon as the box is opened?

And in that case, do are IDC numbers worth a flying crap?