[KLUG Advocacy] TCO Windoze vs Linux

[Mike Williams]

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> From: Adam Tauno Williams <adam@morrison-ind.com> To: 
> advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org Subject: Re: [KLUG Advocacy] TCO Windoze 
> vs Linux Reply-To: advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
>
>>>By now I think everybody's heard of the Microsoft-commisioned "study" 
>>>that states that Total Cost of Ownership is lower with Windows servers 
>>>than Linux ones in most roles.  Ignoring the various false assumptions 
>>>that made such a result possible, the main reason they gave for this was 
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>I put TCO up there with phrenology, divination, and tea leaves.  It has far more
>to do with your staff/skill mix than the actual technology deployed,  even if
>that techonolgy sucks.
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Granted.  Improving sotware's "user-friendliness" usually means 
improving user's "computer literacy.

>>>the relative immaturity of Linux's management tools.  Can somebody who 
>>>knows them comment on this?  
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>I know, in spades.
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>>>I've only worked as an IT person in 
>>>Microsoft environments, and I can say that while a GUI is nice to have, 
>>>management tools are not all that great on Windows.  Pre Windows 2000 
>>>they're downright awful. 
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>Agree.
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>>>How bad are Linux tools?  
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>It depends.  If you have a directory enabled network (i.e. LDAP) there are some
>really nice tools for manageing both users/groups and arbitrary information: 
>DirectoryAdministrator, GQ, etc...  Otherwise management of accounts, e-mail
>information, etc... is a bear.
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>RedHats printer configuration, DNS, and Apache virutal hosting tools are
>top-notch, IMHO.
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>If you use Kerberos GNOME provides a very nice GUI for principle administration.
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I suppose one of these days I'll have to try something fancier than 
commandline LinuxConf.

>>>Does it have 
>>>anything to match the tricks in Active Directory like remapping My 
>>>Documents to a server share and 
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>NFS automounting?
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I've never worked with NFS, much less automounting of it.  Can you 
explain a bit?

>>>assigning software packages to be installed as needed on workstations?  
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>There is kudzu for initial installation.  Remote installing an RPM is easy,
>other than that I've never seen such a system work except in demonstration.
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Here's the scenario I'm looking at.  Joe Employee has a computer, and 
everything is set up in Active Directory.  Through upgrade, reformat, or 
other disaster he gets a new computer.  Under W2k, his "My Documents" 
folder was mapped to a server directory and his most common software 
packages are "assigned"  to him (or maybe it's "published").  When he 
gets his new computer, the IT person joins it to the Domain.  The first 
time Joe logs on those applications are pushed down to him.  Anything 
else he might need, like Acrobat Reader, will be installed the first 
time he tries to open a PDF.  Can anything under Linux match this? 
 Again, I don't know from experience that AD can actually do this, but 
according to my MCSE book it's in there.