Why would anyone use Windows?

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

Man of Honour
Soldato
Joined
2 Aug 2005
Posts
8,721
Location
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
That's a common complaint, drak3, but I don't think it holds up any more. Back in the days of yore amateurs did a lot of development, but nowadays the bigt companies are really steering development and are paying people to do the work. Take a look through sour source directories. Grep for email addresses in it. See how many @novell.com, @redhat.com, @intel.com, @sun.com, and others are contained within. A lot of these people are paid Linux hackers. These big companies want to use Linux in or with their products and as such actively support the furtherance of the platform with human and financial capital.

Enterprise IT managers are always in need to a throat to choke. That's how Red Hat, Novell, Canonical and others make their money. The IT shop purchases support from a company and are thusly guaranteed a fix.

Furthermore, Debian doesn't have to worry about these things ;)
 

GarethDW

GarethDW

GarethDW

Soldato
Joined
22 Jun 2006
Posts
2,971
Location
Swindon
drak3 said:
If your daily Airbus flight was using open source software, would you still board the plane?

yes? err no? Maybe? :p "We are sorry, SuperCoder did not manage to upload the patch last night cause he went out with his girlfriend. We appologise for the inconvinience" :p
Click to expand...
Absolutely.

In fact, let's turn things round the other way. If you lived next to a nuclear power plant would you feel more comfortable if that plant was running Unix / Linux or Windows?

drak3 said:
Companies pay, so they can blame and demand!

Risk/Reward rule applies also here I guess. If you need free software and prepared to blame your self if it goes wrong then use it, else pay in 3 figures someone and blame them if it goes bust.

I am sure the people in enterprise IT would demand 3 figures if a bug resulted in their systems going bust for 2 days if they bought a product. Not the case with open source - use at your own risk.
Click to expand...
I agree with this. I've seen it in action at plenty of places - open source software providers can't be tied-into contracts and made into scapegoats when something goes wrong. Ironically enough, there used to be a saying, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" whereas nowadays Big Blue are a major contributor to the open source scene. Where I currently work, IBM has long since been replaced by MS in the saying quoted above.
 

GarethDW

GarethDW

GarethDW

Soldato
Joined
22 Jun 2006
Posts
2,971
Location
Swindon
digisatman said:
"Why would anyone use Windows?"

... Because you dont need to book a weeks holiday just to get your wireless usb stick working...:p
Click to expand...
Is that one that you've checked is on the Linux Hardware Compatibility List or not?

I've been struggling to get some hardware that's not compatible with Windows to work. I bought a keyboard that is only compatible with the W.O.P.R range of mainframes, but thought I'd give it a go at getting it to work under Windows. Took me a week, I failed so gave up.
 

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

Man of Honour
Soldato
Joined
2 Aug 2005
Posts
8,721
Location
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
GarethDW said:
...the W.O.P.R range of mainframes...
Click to expand...
woprbs5.jpg


Dang, I forgot about those. They were beautiful machines in their day. It's a shame the security model left much to be desired.
 

bigredshark

bigredshark

bigredshark

Man of Honour
Joined
30 Jun 2005
Posts
9,515
Location
London Town!
drak3 said:
If your daily Airbus flight was using open source software, would you still board the plane?

yes? err no? Maybe? :p "We are sorry, SuperCoder did not manage to upload the patch last night cause he went out with his girlfriend. We appologise for the inconvinience" :p

Companies pay, so they can blame and demand!

Risk/Reward rule applies also here I guess. If you need free software and prepared to blame your self if it goes wrong then use it, else pay in 3 figures someone and blame them if it goes bust.

I am sure the people in enterprise IT would demand 3 figures if a bug resulted in their systems going bust for 2 days if they bought a product. Not the case with open source - use at your own risk.
Click to expand...

That argument falls flat when you look at Redhat, you pay a lot for support but it's fantastic, the best software support I've ever dealt with. My recollection is they beat microsoft easily when it comes to fixing bugs too.

Or Solaris, which is open source code now, but is backed by support from Sun should you choose to pay for it, which isn't as good as Redhat but still easily competition for Microsoft's fairly average support.]

It also ignores the huge amount of open source Unix deployed in some of the biggest companies around, I'd bet that none of the FTSE100 companies are exclusively Windows based for their server farms, certainly of the half dozen I deal with, all are heavy linux users.
 

Dj_Jestar

Dj_Jestar

Dj_Jestar

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
29,491
Location
Back in East London
Every FTSE100 company operates Linux/Unix. Not exclusively, but they all use it. The big players only use Windows for the desktops and support for desktops' users (File servers, Mail servers, AD.)

The occasional IIS or MSSQL server knocks about, but they are (as are Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) too small time for their needs and so they will have some z/OS system that does the number crunching and data storage for them.
 
Last edited:

bigredshark

bigredshark

bigredshark

Man of Honour
Joined
30 Jun 2005
Posts
9,515
Location
London Town!
Dj_Jestar said:
Every FTSE100 company operates Linux/Unix. Not exclusively, but they all use it. The big players only use Windows for the desktops and support for desktops' users (File servers, Mail servers, AD.)

The occasional IIS or MSSQL server knocks about, but they are (as are Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) too small time for their needs and so they will have some z/OS system that does the number crunching and data storage for them.
Click to expand...

That's basically what I just said??

You'd be surprised about databases though, big systems like z/OS are far from universal and are only appropriate for certain companies. Our biggest client of that size runs all their databases on either Oracle on RHEL or MSSQL, SQL2005 is an impressive product...
 

Dj_Jestar

Dj_Jestar

Dj_Jestar

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
29,491
Location
Back in East London
bigredshark said:
That's basically what I just said??

You'd be surprised about databases though, big systems like z/OS are far from universal and are only appropriate for certain companies. Our biggest client of that size runs all their databases on either Oracle on RHEL or MSSQL, SQL2005 is an impressive product...
Click to expand...
I was backing up your statement. From my experiences with Barclays (Wealth, and Capital) RBS, ABN AMRO (before takeover), and NatWest, they all have MSSQL for the smaller apps, but the big number crunching risk analysis and market analysis apps are fed from/to some form of z/OS :)
 

bigredshark

bigredshark

bigredshark

Man of Honour
Joined
30 Jun 2005
Posts
9,515
Location
London Town!
Dj_Jestar said:
I was backing up your statement. From my experiences with Barclays (Wealth, and Capital) RBS, ABN AMRO (before takeover), and NatWest, they all have MSSQL for the smaller apps, but the big number crunching risk analysis and market analysis apps are fed from/to some form of z/OS :)
Click to expand...

Thats true, but they're all banks :) Not every big company is!
 

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
10,383
Location
Behind you... Naked!
Found a couple of sweeties for those who GAF.

How MS themselves have extended the deadline to go back to XP from vista, pretty much meaning that they can by-pass vista altogether and then jump onto Windows 7 when MS finally do decide to forget about Windows ME2, Sorry, Vista.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/03/windows_xp_recovery/

And of course, unless you are a total tart with a search engine, just have a look at how much money MS have plunged into Linux lately!!!! - More specifically, Novell - Talk about sleeping with the enemy.
 

FooAtari

FooAtari

FooAtari

Associate
Joined
29 Jan 2007
Posts
622
FatRakoon said:
Clearly from your posts, you have absolutely no idea about anything Linux, let alone re-writing your own O/S

What a fanny.
Click to expand...

+1

I'm fine with people who prefer windows over Linux, don't like Linux at all, or pointing out it's flaws. As long as they know what they are talking about/talking from experience.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom