[PLUG] How to explain benefits of Linux for corporate droids?

Shannon C. Dealy dealy at deatech.com
Sat Aug 3 17:19:24 UTC 2002


On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Stephen Liu wrote:

[snip]
> Windoz has been existing for a prolonged time prior to Linux giving its
> birth.  If I am wrong please correct me.  Windoz OS has already been deep
> rooted in most people's mind which is not easy to erase.

This really isn't correct, from the user perspective, Linux is really just
another version of UNIX, which predates the first release of Windows by
almost 15 years, and predates the first version of Windows that the public
actually heard of (version 3.0) by almost 20 years.  It's true that the
"Linux" implementation of UNIX came later, but only a couple years after
Windows 3.0 was released.

[snip]
> A) Adminstration
> To convince the decision-maker (executive) to consider switching to Linux
> OS is almost a miracle, if not completely impossible.  Most people are
> reluctant to learn, dislike us, the Linux folks, possessing of exploring
> character.  He may only possess some basic know-how on Linux.  There are
> two uncertainties laid before him.  a) Can I catch up this new
> technology???  b) Can my technology absorbed thereafter be on top of other
> staffs maintaining a higher potential???.  He is worrying his position
>[snip]
> their staffs is not easy to overcome, even the boss.  If we try to convince
> them from cash angle they won't listen to you.  Reality in life plays the
> most important role.

The reality of life in the hi-tech world is that change is the only
constant, no one can afford to simply sit and wait for retirement while
not bothering to learn anything new, unless they want to retire alot
earlier than they were planning.  Unless these people keep learning, and
regularly make the best possible technical choices for their companies,
(regardless of what products they would like to use or feel comfortable
with) they run the risk of leaving their company behind the competition,
and in business that is usually the begining of the end.  This isn't going
to convince these people to change, the reality is the odds favor their
company falling behind and possibly failing unless/until there is some
employee turnover and new people who are more open to better solutions
come on board.

> B) Technology
> Most applications run on Windoz.  I am not talking about Office, PhotoShop,
> Internet browser, email, etc.  We have plenty substitutes in Linux
> world.  Most, if not 100%, CAD applications for Architect, Mechanical
> Engineering, Chemical Engineering, graphics development, etc. could not run
> on Linux, even the compilers.  They are designed to run on Windoz.  VMware,
> Win4Lin, Crossover, Wine, etc. can't help.  Besides it does not bear much

I am not sure what you mean by can't help, between these environments, you
can run virtually any program ever written for windows.

> sense to pay double licenses, one to Windoz and another to those simulator
> developers, because they need Windoz to run on them except Wine.  Why not
> go back to Windoz PC ?  Wine is a wonderful tool but unfortunately still
> under development.

While you are probably right for people who only run one or two
applications at a time, and for whom word processing is the bulk of
their work, it actually makes far more sense to use the above approaches
such as VMware for any serious power user.  Every version of Windows and
most of it's applications are notoriously unstable, and typically when
anything goes wrong it takes the computer down, losing everything that was
going on at the time.  Though many managers don't realize it, problems
like this can easily waste 10% of a power user's working time.  Each crash
takes down all applications, the user must wait for the reboot, startup
all the applications, recover the lost/damaged files, reenter any lost
data, etc.  By using Linux as the base and something like VMware
(preferably running only one application in each virtual machine), the
computer stays up, and if an application crashes the user can keep right
on working on other applications while the virtual machine is rebooting.
I didn't even address in the above, the case of people running
computationally intensive programs on their computer, many types of
analysis software might take hours to run, and unless the program saves
it's state on a regular basis, when the computer crashes, it must start
over again from the begining, resulting in long delays for the completion
of the program.

It should be noted that the applications you were referencing above,
are the types of programs used primarily by heavy duty scientific and
engineering types, and these are exactly the kind of people and software
packages that are most likely to crash a Windows box and therefore will
have the greatest amount of wasted time.  Coincidentally, these people are
usually among the most expensive people on the payroll, so the added cost
of a license for VMware or other products, really shouldn't even be a
consideration once you look at how much time they will waste from not
using it or similar products/approaches.  Based on my personal experience
with Windows crashes and the time I save using VMware (which I have been
using since before the 1.0 release), I would estimate that it paid for
itself and the time I had to invest in getting it and the virtual machines
setup and configured, in less than one month.  If I hadn't had to spend
time setting up virtual machines and installing Windows on them, I think
it would have paid for itself in less than a week, and this doesn't even
touch on money/time saved by other capabilities that it provides which you
can't do in any other environment.

Based on my experience, for any computer user doing anything more serious
than word processing, it makes MORE sense (both from a time and financial
perspective) to run their Windows software on a Linux platform in some
sort of virtual or emulated environment than it does to run it on a
standard Windows based computer.  Of course if they are only doing word
processing, OpenOffice and Linux are alot cheaper and every bit as stable
as Windows and MS-Word.

NOTE: I am not claiming OpenOffice is stable here, only that it is no less
stable than MS-Word running on Windows.  The last time I used MS-Word
(just over a year ago) it crashed on me four times in two days, despite
the fact that the box had just arrived from Dell with Win 2000, MS Office
XP, and Norton anti-virus preinstalled.  No other software products
were installed on the machine, and only MS-Word was actually running at
the time of each of the crashes.

FWIW.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
   or: (541) 451-5177 |                  www.deatech.com





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