On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 10:21:23PM -0600, Bob Tanner wrote:
> I might be blinded by by religion and this group my not have the ability to let
> the religion go, but can anyone look outside the box on this and comment?

Ditto.

> My perspective is Linux is much cheaper then Windows. Even if you pay for a
> distro you are starting out ahead. Add the virus resistence, stability,
> reliability, and security out of the box. Linux should be have a better TOC then
> Win2k.

Depends a lot on where and how you're talking about using it.  Put it
on desktops, you'll have retraining costs[1].  Expect users to admin
their own Linux boxes, and those retraining costs will be massive -
but if you're running a *nix network, you probably know better than
to let the average user admin their own box.  Put it in the server
room with some decent admins, and you can watch TCO plummet.

Staff costs?  Yes, the typical *nix admin costs a bit more (I've
usually heard $15-20k/year more) than a Windows admin, but he can
keep a lot more boxes up and they're up a greater percentage of the
time.

Hardware costs?  *nix doesn't make you upgrade your boxes every few
years.

Software costs?  *nix doesn't force you to upgrade your software
every other year.  Never mind Linux - when you factor in MS's upgrade
treadmill, many commercial *nixen could be cheaper than Windows over
the course of 10 years.

IMO, there are only two areas where Windows continues to outshine
Linux:

1)  Software availability.  There's a ton of great software out there
for Linux and most of it is free for the downloading.  However,
StarOffice isn't compatible enough with MS Office for some people,
some web sites will only work for MSIE, etc.

If any of these limitations affect you, TCO could be increased by the
need to work around them.

2)  Hardware compatibility.  A lot of new hardware doesn't come with
Linux drivers.  In a corporate environment, though, this isn't a real
big deal.  Just standardize on a platform that does work and that's
that.

[1]  I work for a manufacturing company which uses Linux on most
desktops.  We got a new receptionist about a month and a half ago.
The first day, after I got her KDE desktop set up, she made a couple
comments about being kinda lost because she only knew Windows and
Office.  I pointed her to the icons I'd set up for StarOffice and our
main database app and she was up and running.  Over her first two
weeks, I had to visit her once to show her how to deal with file
permissions on documents she inherited from the old receptionist and
twice to find functions for her in StarOffice.

So, yes, there are retraining costs.  But they're not nearly so
extreme as most anaylsts would have you believe.

-- 
When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists
have already won. - reverius

Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Mr. Slippery