Introduction: The following analysis was conducted after reading an article entitled "Adolescent Angst" from InformationWeek, written by Larry Greenemeier in the June 2, 2003 issue. Essentially I looked at the graphs based on their survey results, ignored the "upsides" portion of the article, and wrote a bullet point for each item in the "Plenty of Weaknesses" graph.

Background: The person that wrote the original version of this analysis is Jeff MacDonald.

The online version of the document that I analyzed (including the graphs) can be found here.

• This article compares an SGI graphics workstation (Octane) to a Red Hat Desktop machine, yet makes no reference to the fact that an Octane made with customized parts (SGI does their own hardware) vs. commodity parts leaves a huge gap in the hardware capabilities of the machine. You can't fairly use "consumer grade" parts in a performance comparison especially if the competition gets to use custom hardware. There is also no mention of what software was being used. Where is the motivation for SGI to get their software to run smoothly on the competing platform?
• "So far, Spurlino has been unable to get the Linux system to synchronize the modelling app with the monitor"
  • which modeling app?
  • what hardware is involved?
  • what X server is involved?
  • what graphics library is involved?
  • what video drivers are involved?
  • An operating system is composed of many pieces. The kernel, in and of itself, is not responsible for problems with user applications. The only major issue I can think of in this specific case is use of the "nvidia" drivers for Linux. Without further information regarding the problem, though, it is very difficult to say exactly what the problem is and how best to fix it.
  • As a specific example, blender is an amazingly powerful yet free 3D graphics rendering application that runs quite well on both win32 and Linux.
• "lack of documentation"
  • Red Hat comes with at least three full length books covering various aspects of their system. There is also extensive documentation available online for free directly from the Red Hat website and other sources.
• "lack of technical knowledge" as impediment to Linux on the desktop.
  • GNOME and KDE are very well designed desktop environments for Linux and UNIX-like operating systems. Given the GUI (point-and-click) nature of these environments, there isn't a great deal of technical knowledge required to use Red Hat above and beyond what would be required for win32. You use the same mouse (though it generally has more than two buttons), and the applications that link against KDE or GNOME have a standardized look and feel to them that is no more difficult to use than the equivalent win32 application would be. Problems regarding usability in this area are not the fault of Red Hat, the Linux kernel, or the GNOME/KDE environments.
• "plenty of weaknesses" graph of survey results
  • "Limited availability of business software" (up in 2003 vs. 2002)
    • does not describe which business applications there is a lack of.
      • specifically cites openoffice.org and it's deployment in their test case, and nothing about lack of features or compatibility problems with win32.
      • openoffice.org reads and writes microsoft formats, and has it's own cross-platform, extensible, XML based file format.
      • Why is this number up in 2003 over 2002, even though the available software is getting better and is more wide spread versus a year ago?
  • "Too many versions" (down in 2003 over 2002)
    • I don't see this as a downside. There are certain guidelines that are followed by (most) popular Linux distributions that address this specific issue. Package management is something that Red Hat does quite well, when combined with their RHN service.
    • "Too Many Versions" of what, exactly? The Kernel? Red Hat specifically? Other software?
  • "Limited availability of training/education" (down in 2003 from 2002).
  • "Concerned about its scalibility" (up in 2003 over 2002)
    • as compared to what? win32? other UNIX variants?
    • Linux runs fine on SMP (multiple processor) machines.
    • Linux runs well on machines other than Intel hardware.
    • beowulf clusters
    • RAID support (large storage arrays, usually with hot swap capability)
    • support of SCSI since nearly day one (reliability, scalability, speed over EIDE)
  • "Not supported by our major hardware vendors" (down in 2003 vs 2002)
    • IBM
    • Dell
    • others..
  • "Don't want to support another OS in our current IT environment" (slightly down in 2003 over 2002)
  • "Not enough outside technical support available" (down in 2003 over 2002)
  • "Not controlled by a single vendor" (about the same in 2002 vs. 2003)
    • single sourcing of anything is not a good thing. end of story. This applies to software and hardware, and even to areas outside of IT.
  • "Concerned about it's reliability" (up in 2003 vs. 2002)
    • No mention of what exactly is wrong with reliability, just that it is a concern.
    • Helpdesks often suggest rebooting a win32 workstation or server in the face of any problem as a *first step*. This says loads about the reliability of that particular platform.
    • To be fair, there is plenty of UNIX software that has bugs. I would venture that all software has bugs, in one severity or another. The advantage of the UNIX way of doing things is that a memory corruption problem does not generally require the entire OS to be rebooted. The application usually crashes with a segmentation fault, dumping a "core file", but that is all-- no reboot required.
    • Some interesting statitics from uptimes.nu indicate an average uptime for Linux of 78.5 days. The Microsoft number is not as impressive: 19.6 days.
  • "Don't trust open source software" (up in 2003 vs. 2002)
    • No statistics provided here with respect to why they do not trust open source vs. closed source. Obviously to an end user, having source code does not really offer a direct advantage, especially if that user is not a programmer of some type. The end user benefits indirectly because when the source is available bugs can be fixed much more quickly due to the sheer number of developers that can look into the problem and submit a fix. In the closed source world, you would have to submit a bug report to the vendor and hope they see fit to fix things in a timely fashion. In the open source world bugs (especially security or stability or reliability related issues) are fixed and distributed within hours not weeks or months. When the Linux kernel was in it's infancy, issues with the implementation of the TCP/IP stack were fixed within hours of the bug report. Users updated their kernel, and moved on to the next issue, problem solved.
  • other (way down in 2003 vs. 2002)
• Note: multiple answers allowed
• Base: 431 sites from 2002 and 274 sites from 2003 with Linux installed one year or more.
• Data: InformationWeek Research Linux survey of 500 business-technology professionals
• Note: confusion in terminology of "Linux" (which is just the kernel) vs. "Red Hat's distribution of Linux and other GNU software"
• "Linux" is often referred to as "GNU/Linux" because Red Hat (and other distributions, like Gentoo and Debian) is actually both: GNU software and Linux as the kernel. Originally, GNU had their own kernel they called HURD, which was never completed because Linux came along.
• Microsoft generally takes the approach that they bundle everything you could ever need as part of the operating system. In the specific example of web browser, MS bundles IE with their OS. Red Hat bundles Mozilla, which is the next generation Netscape browser, but you can download alternatives to mozilla easily.
• Note that most open source software is developed to "scratch an itch" in some particular application space, and it is released so that others can try it out and contribute.
• openoffice.org (and StarOffice from Sun Microsystems before that) was implemented to bring an office application to UNIX-like operating systems that is both feature rich and compatible with Microsoft documents.
• Open source applications exist for the accouting space. I do not have any personal experience here, but I know at least one such project exists.
• Open source database systems exist that rival the performance and features of the commercial SQL-based alternatives (Postgresql vs. Oracle vs. Informix vs. MS Access).
• File and Print Sharing services exist in open source, compatible with Microsoft. The package is called samba. I have deployed this particular application extensively in hybrid (Mirosoft and Linux) environments, and it works quite well. Thousands of System Administrators agree with me. Samba is shipped with Red Hat.
• Browser based Services (extranet, intranet, etc)
  • apache vs. IIS -- Apache runs on the win32 platform now, and has for quite some time. It is widely known that Apache is deployed in more places than IIS is. Specific numbers are available from the netcraft survey of web server deployments.
  • php and mod_python and twisted vs. ASP and Visual Basic.
  • user agents (browsers) available for Red Hat Linux:
    • Mozilla
    • konq (KDE based)
    • Mozilla Firebird
• InformationWeek had far fewer responses in 2003 (431) vs. 2002 (274) for a difference of 157. I am not suprised the numbers stack up the way they do. I am wondering what would account for the change? I wonder if their readership has dropped over the last year?
• One area the article does not address is the question of whether or not those users "dissatisfied" in one way or another actually switched back to win32, or went with some other UNIX variant.
• Is everyone responding to the survey using Red Hat? What version? What about Gentoo? What about Debian?
• I will not claim that Red Hat is the "end all be all" of the Linux distributions available, just that it is currently (June, 2003) the most popular.
• Microsoft, being the biggest by far, has a huge base in the United States. I point out that the foothold is not nearly as strong in other countries on this planet, despite their best efforts including but not limited to drastic price cuts. Germany still went with Linux over Microsoft even after the offer of said price cuts.
• There are lots of training options available and Red Hat offers certification in their operating system at a number of different levels and price points, just like win32. Red Hat also ships several books with their distribution, covering all aspects of the system. There is also lots and lots of help available from the end user community via other support channels including IRC and usenet and mailing lists in addition to the professional support Red Hat offers for their own stuff.
• Red Hat resolves the issue of package management via their RHN Service.
• Red Hat digitally signs their packages, so that their authenticity can be verified. As an additional measure, their advisories publish an md5 sum of the packages, so that it can be compared to the output of the 'md5' command before installing the package. If the md5sum of the package downloaded does not match the md5sum there is a high probability that the package has been modified in some way, and should not be used. The 'rpm' utility has the ability to verify the digital signature of the package being installed via a command-line option. 'up2date' uses digital signature technology to confirm that the server being used is trusted.
• It is well known that many of the graphics for The Titanic used a Linux-based render farm. More information can be found in this article, from hoise.com.

Standard Disclaimer: All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX trademark is currently held by The Open Group, Windows is a trademark of Microsoft, etc.

Contributors:

• Larry Moore contributed the link to the online version of the article, which I did not have.
• CyberDemon (and others) on #cola Advocating FREEDOM, GNU/Linux, OSS, Free Software, Pie, etc.

I would like to solicit contributions to these notes from other Linux users. Please contact me via the information on my resume or via IRC (jonez on irc.freenode.net, irc.oftc.net, irc.2600.com, etc) or AIM (jonez734) if you would like to contribute. Spelling and grammatical errors in this document are (probably) my fault entirely. I am not getting paid to write this, so all I can offer is your name on the document as a contributor if you help.