RE: [PLUG] need stats!! stat!

[William Shank <wshank@mbcnet.com>]

 I'm just looking for information, period, not necessarily trying to prove
Linux will beat Windows at everything. However, I would like to be able to
say "In comparing database servers, A windows DB server requires the
following in license fees ($XYZ) and the same ghardware with linux costs
($ABC). installation for the windows OS software is Xhrs and the
installation for the DB software is Yhrs. Installtion for linux software is
XHrs...etc. Maintaining a windows machine is generally X man hours per
month, linux is Y man hours per month. Maintaining a windows DB is Z man
hours per month and linux is W man hours per month"

this is the kind of caomparisin i'm after. I realize it's generally accpeted
that linux is easier to install/maintain, but i need number to back-up that
claim.

thanks in advance

chris

-----Original Message-----
From: gabriel rosenkoetter
To: plug@lists.phillylinux.org
Sent: 11/13/01 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] need stats!! stat!

On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 09:23:56AM -0500, William Shank wrote:
> I'm putting together a win vs. linux business comparison and need to
find
> some numbers relating to installation, maintenance, service and other
TCO
> for both windows and linux. The side-by-side license comparison is a
> no-brainer, the challenge is in the soft costs. Anyone know where I
might
> find this data?

How 'bout:

  http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22770.html

Ho, ho, ho.

Seriously, this kind of information is somewhat application-specific,
so it'd help to know a little more about what kind of task is going
to be performed. No need to violate an NDA, but are you talking
about desktops in a business, servers in a business, servers sharing
a lot of files with many writes, or with many reads, or with both...
or a few large files? All of these kinds of interactions have been
benchmarked, though probably not on your hardware with your kernel
set up, so building a sample machine to do your own benchmarking and
compare the results from a platform-independent benchmark software
running on each OS on the same hardware would probably be a good
idea.

And that totally neglects what your management wants to see... do
they want these systems to be hands off? Are they going to want to
change things later?

Someone else can probably provide the usual opinion write-ups (which
I don't value particularly highly). I think it was mentioned at the
last meeting that the UK version of PC World (or similar) had found
KDE to beat out both Windows 2000 and Mac OS X in a useability
study. They allegedly also tested other aspects than useability
(including some that you list above), so you might try to find that.

Keep in mind that there's no absolute guarantee that such a comparison
will show Linux to be better; there *are* some things that Windows
does faster, and it *is* easier for the less-trained to understand
and administrate down the line.

-- 
       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net

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