TCO, was Re: [PLUG] hiring full-time: PHP programmer

[Mark Griskey]

Greetings, 

I had been following the PHP programmer thread.  Yesterday, the discussion 
turned to economics and then to whether it was Linux related or not.  It most 
certainly is, one of the hot topics lately in all the IT rags has been the 
debate over the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the Linux operating system. 
This group seems very diverse, and I'm sure a TCO discussion could benefit.

Lets face it, buying a $6.99 set of RedHat CDs at cheapbytes.com is far less 
expensive than the proprietary alternatives.  But, this not only includes the 
Operating System, but a full set of software, everything from databases to 
Web servers, to email clients, graphics programs, etc.  Alternatively, if you 
already have access broadband, you can just download the distro of your 
choice, or get a copy from a friend.

Then there are the issues of system maintenance, uptime, etc.  I'm sure there 
are varying experiences here, but we've all heard stories of long uptime on 
Linux servers, (personally, I had a Web/database server up over two years 
without a reboot, only to come down in a power outage).  Pepper this with 
security, quality, and the benefits of open source code, I firmly believe 
Linux comes out far ahead than the alternatives at a TCO of far less. And, as 
far as tech support goes, you can beat the wealth of information on the Web, 
Usenet or the local LUG.

Lets not forget that Linux runs on a variety of hardware old and new.  I have 
a 3 year old laptop running Linux that is still rock solid, no complaints.  I 
have seen some folks around give machine specs along with their question and 
have noticed the 200MHz processors still in use.  "Dude, you're getting a 
Dell", why?  My desktop is a bit old, but works fine.

This past summer, I decided to try Windows XP and explore .NET.  I had not 
used Windows since Win95, and felt that in order to glean a fair opinion I 
needed to try Microsoft's latest offering.  In short, as I said above, I 
firmly believe Linux comes out ahead.  And its much cheaper.  Last week I was 
thrilled after I installed XDarwin on my Mac OSX machine, and then through 
the Fink project, install the Gimp, and the newsreader Pan.  Photoshop is 
expensive, and I like the Gimp, am used to it, and it does exactly what I 
want it to do. (For those of you who have seen Mac Gimp out there for $30, 
you can get the Gimp through fink.sourceforge.net for exactly $30 LESS.) 

Have a good day

Mark