[mdlug] A big opportunity for Linux?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> >Sure, and "cost effective" means allot more than upfront cost.  Since
> >most businesses pay a pittance for desktop machines, let alone the
> >software on them,  the business case for LINUX is a pretty hard sell.
> Errrr, I take it you have never actually see a M$ Enterprise support 
> agreement and the eight figure ransom big business pays for the real 
> cost of these "cheep" desktops.

Are we talking about enterprises or small/medium businesses?  Seems to
me the mile post in these kind of debates gets switched back and forth
allot.  Enterprises just don't care,  it isn't that expensive relative
to other things.  No small/medium business I've ever encountered has an
M$ support agreement.

> If they don't pay, they risk the very 
> real probability that malware will take down their business. 

Bogus.  I admin a network of ~250 Windows 2000 & XP workstations.  No
support agreement.  The threat of malware is drasitically overstated by
fear mongers and alarmists,  the issue is actually quite easily to deal
with using well-known techniques.  Openness to Open Source solutions
only makes it even easier.  In all the years I've been an admin there
has been one lonely incident of malware disrupting (not shutting down)
normal business and the issue was resolved within hours.
<aside>Fortunately for us our competition was down for a couple of
days. :)</aside>

> Then, there's the cheeper cost of AV and infection mitigation for the user 
> induced events.

Well, the cost of our AV protection solution... $0.00.

> AND, if they have an envirornment where a vedor sells them a WIN OS 
> embeded device (MF copier, manufacturing machinery, appliance, etc) they 
> are at real mercy of the desktop devicing causing interruption of their 
> core business when the cheep desktops cause faults 

Eh?  This doesn't even make sense.  If you have any kind of embedded
device / appliance you are always 110% at the mercy of the vendor.
Nothing changes that.  Fortunately my experience is that most embedded
devices are far too stupid / limited / sealed to respond to malware in
anyway (you're lucky if most "appliances" even manage to do what they
were advertised to do).

> - maybe infections - 
> of these "turn key" opperations.  Most of these embeded devices never 
> get patched and the vendor usually tells the client they can't touch the

Sure, and what does this have to do with Windows vs. LINUX desktops?
The embedded devices are just there - nothing anyone can do about the
bloody things. (I have well over two dozen hosts running NT embedded,
real crap).

> OS. I have seen all of this. It is costing business multi-billions to 
> mitigate the risks and clean up after this so call "cheep OS". 

And I've seen those numbers;  same thing with SPAM... it is costing some
unholy amount of money.  I don't buy it.  If this is true then those
networks are being administered poorly or someone is quite happy to just
fork over buckets of money for someone else to deal with the problem (a
legitimate business solution in some cases [although, I suspect, usually
not]).

> I thought eveyone knows M$ does not make the bulk of their $$$ from 
> selling the actual software anymore....

So?  This is true of IBM, HP, Sun, etc... hardware & software is just a
platform.  The solution is valuable part, so of course that is where the
profit is.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams, Network & Systems Administrator
Consultant - http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com
Developer - http://www.opengroupware.org