[mdlug] A big opportunity for Linux?

[Aaron Kulkis]

Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
>>> 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).

I just had a scary thought... an MS-embeded network printer
being turned into a spam-bot.

I wonder how many exist already.