TCO Windows vs Linux (Part 1: a Linux Professonal)

Today fsdaily posted an forum thread asking why they should use linux but not using certain reasons. However, some of the reasons they said can't be used are part of the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of a computer.

What is TCO? Here's some of what Wikipedia says about it.

A TCO assessment ideally offers a final statement reflecting not only the cost of purchase but all aspects in the further use and maintenance of the equipment, device, or system considered. This includes the costs of training support personnel and the users of the system, costs associated with failure or outage (planned and unplanned), diminished performance incidents (i.e. if users are kept waiting), costs of security breaches (in loss of reputation and recovery costs), costs of disaster preparedness and recovery, floor space, electricity, development expenses, testing infrastructure and expenses, quality assurance, boot image control, marginal incremental growth, decommissioning, e-waste handling, and more.

By this definition not all computer owners are going to have the same TCO as others, as not everyone knows the same things or needs the same things.

First let's assume that the hardware costs the same. This can happen if you build the computer yourself or you get someone to do it for you.

I'm going to give examples of several types of people and what there approximate TCO is. All of these people are going to go to the locally owned and operated computer store, John's Comps. They all want the $1,200 computer that doesn't have an OS on it, The labor to install the OS is $50 for either Linux or Windows. So the preliminary cost just for parts and labor is $1,250.

Our first person, Caleb (that's me), is a system administrator and has been using Linux for 4 years, and has been using it more than windows, but doesn't want to take the time building the system himself, so I'm going to get it from John's.

I figure I have 4 choices of what OS to put on this machine since I'm a power users and will probably want all the power toys I can get. Here's what they are going to cost me in Licensing. (these are full licenses as it's a new computer and licensing isn't transferable, tax not included. list prices obtained from amazon and microsoft. )

License	XP Professional	Vista Ultimate	Server 2008 Standard	Linux
Price	$300	$340	$1000	$0
Subtotal	$1550	$1590	$2250	$1250

So right now linux is ahead for me in TCO... but what do I have to add once I get home? We'll say this is replacing my current system so it has to be able to do the same things I do on this system. This include writing office documents, security, running server daemons, and doing development.

Even on windows all the software I need to secure my system and make it useful is free. So I won't add the cost of anything other than my time to install them. I don't have any scripts that install these things for me so I have to add all the repositories (and check the box's) or download all the software, and run the executables by hand. Time is money, let's say a persons time is worth $20 an hour and I already know where to get everything I need.

I'm going to estimate 1 hour for Linux, to get everything downloaded, installed and configured since I've already got the config files. everything but the daemons and some multimedia stuff was probably already installed.

on windows I think it will take me 3 hours, It'll take 1 just to download all the software I need, including an anti-virus, anti-spyware, firefox, vim, cygwin, or msys, a codec pack for watching movies, flash, adobe acrobat, open office. All of these things are on various sites and I'll have to navigate them to get to the dowloads. I'll have to wait on some of them and I've left out a few. Some will require reboots, meaning more than one. Then we run update on the ones that have definitions files, the anti-malware stuff, that usually takes 20 minutes. Then I have to configure them, since everything is gui I can't copy most of my config files into place since many of them have the config in the registry not a text file. So assuming all goes well it takes about 3 hours to get my windows system up to optimal usability for me.

Unfortunately I find out that all the apps I used on linux aren't available for windows or are a bit different. So it takes me 4 hours to find decent replacement apps $80, and another 4 hours to learn how to use them $80, but I lose 10 hours of productivity over a few weeks changing my habits. $200 for a subtotal of $360.

Now in 6 months major updates to both systems come along. We'll say a service pack and a distro release. It takes 2 hours for me to install linux and configure it (since I always do a fresh install). It take 30 minutes for the windows service pack (neither included download time which I backgrounded, only actual time I spent working on it). So right now we are at ~3 hours $60 for linux and 3.5 hours or $70 for windows.

Within 2 days on windows I notice I'm having system crashes that seem to be related to the video card, I update my drivers 30 minutes, $80, Linux has much improved and lost no functionality and no new instability.

I realize after some more test that the updated driver didn't solve my problems with windows so I uninstall the service pack. Fortunately I know what I'm doing and uninstalling is easy for me $100. I wait a month and go through this cycle with the driver again... it takes 6 months for my video card manufacturer to make there drivers work fine with this SP, each month I tried again, I waste $220 of my time doing so, for $320 total (I actually had a problem like this when SP2 came out). Linux is up for an install again so another 2 hours, $80.

In 2 years I install Linux 4 more times getting linux up to $120, we'll estimate that I spend a total of 1 hour a month keeping linux and windows up to date. it takes me about the same amount of time to run updates in both, and make sure they went smoothly. so we are looking at another $480-$500 dollars to maintain them. So $1180 for windows over 2 years... and $620 for linux.

License	XP Professional	Vista Ultimate	Server 2008 Standard	Linux
Total	$2730	$2770	$3430	$1870

For me switching to windows.... would be almost $1000 more expensive over the course of 2 years than the cheapest version of windows I could get by with.

Over the next several parts of this series I intend to use several different types of people to see how they would get by with linux or windows on a new computer. None of them will be Linux Professionals.

P.S. If anyone knows why that there is a huge amount of whitespace above the tables I'd love to know.

The real problem with windows is not windows

(note: this was originally intended as a reply to Why Is So Hard for Windows Users to Understand That Linux Is Not Windows, but it got so long I felt it should be it's own post. I'm not sure the title is good, but it's close enough)

(note: I use the term users in this blog to mean people who use computers that do not, develop, administrate, repair, or are other wise considered power users, and professional computer users.)

I don't hate windows anymore, like Dan Craciun says they just aren't the same thing. I switched to linux years ago, I see that it isn't perfect anymore, but I still like it better than windows.

If you told me that I had to ignore the constant rebooting on windows and the lack of gaming on linux. I would suggest that I can make either system as stable, and equal in terms of usefulness on the desktop. Sure it might take me a few more hours to secure windows, get drivers installed, and install security tools, and the software I like. But in the end they'd be close to the same, in usability and long term stability for me and normal users.

The truth? the problem with windows isn't entirely windows... it's users. I could teach a user 99% of what they need to know to maintain their computer and keep it running smooth in an hour, but they wouldn't listen, they'd continue to use IE to browse promiscuously, not keep their antivirus, antispyware that I installed up to date.

If you were to change everyone running windows xp to ubuntu (I don't like ubuntu btw) today, I predict in 6 months to a year ubuntu users would have as many problems as windows users today? why? they wouldn't update there systems... they'd disable their firewalls, they would browse to all sorts of bad sites that contain the new linux malware.

How do I know this? I've put 'users' on linux, specifically opensuse, which has a nice little update checker... I show them how to use that after resolving the problems of codecs, and drivers and whatever else install problems they might have. In a week that icon is red, and will stay that way indefinitely because they never ever run updates.

So the real problem is users not treating there computers like cars, and ignoring the fact that they need proper maintenance and there are just some things you shouldn't do with them. True linux is easier for me to fix, mostly due to the lack of a registry, but the problem is not make and model, but lack of maintenance (and yes some makes and models are easier to maintain). If you don't ever get an oil change or add to your oil your engine will burn up a lot faster than it would if you had take care of it.

The one thing that M$ does that causes me to still hate them, because it affects me, is IE. If I had one thing I wanted from microsoft it would be a browser with the standards compliance on par with the likes of Mozilla Firefox (they don't have to achieve opera, or webkit) and without their own proprietary syntax, they have to do it the same way as everyone else (e.g. no active X calls instead of XMLHttpRequest..) But even if IE8 managed to be this browser, it wouldn't help anytime soon... why? because users don't update their software.

Debian and OpenSSL blunder - goodbye debian?

I'm sure you've read about Debian's OpenSSL blunder. If not here's a recap on Linux.com.

I'm just wondering... is it possible that the pain will be so great for admins that the great stable debian will be discontinued from production server use? I would (but I don't use debian based systems for anything but livecds), seriously this is a hugely idiotic mistake the pain of which is only beginning. This may in fact be the biggest security blunder I have ever heard of in open source.

dvorak vs manufacturer's

The Dvorak Keyboard is supposedly better than the qwerty keyboard.

Theoritically all you have to do is change the keyboard layout in your OS and then pop the keys off your keyboard and re-arrange them (technically the second step isn't required but nicer). However all the keyboards I've seen attache the F and the J differently (they also have the home row bumps). Why do they attach them differently? why does it matter to them? is that really needed? I know it isn't anything functional. Do they really have an interest in keeping us from swithching?

can't reach google.com for at least 4 hours

no it isn't my browser, no it isn't my computer, and no it isn't my network. It could be my isp's network I don't really know.

I can't contact google... tried mailing webmaster, but guess what.

Thank you for writing to Google. We'd like to assist you, but we only
respond to messages submitted through our online contact form. Please
visit http://www.google.com/support/ to submit your message, and we'll get
back to you soon. We apologize for any inconvenience, and we look forward
to hearing from you.

Regards,
The Google Team

that's great... guess what? I can't reach that url. I can't reach google.com or google.co.uk

but gmail works, images. works, code. works, video doesn't, I can ping google.com, I can telnet to google.com on port 80. But the site doesn't load. I get weird errors. I'd love to talk to a support person and give them a chance to help. But I can't reach them.


here's my error message... (one of them)

window.google={kEI:"3SEhSNfDBoj0ebezqYEI",kEXPI:"0",kHL:"en"};
window.clk=function(b,c,d,e,f,g){if(document.images){var
a=encodeURIComponent||escape;(new
Image).src="/url?sa=T"+(c?"&oi="+a(c):"")+(d?"&cad="+a(d):"")+"&ct="+a(e)+"&cd="+a(f)+(b?"&url="+a(b.replace(/#.*/,"")).replace(/\+/g,"%2B"):"")+"&ei=3SEhSNfDBoj0ebezqYEI"+g}return
true}; window.gbar={};(function(){var c=window.gbar,e,g,h;c.qs=function(a)
{var
d=window.encodeURIComponent&&(document.forms[0].q||"").value;if(d)a.href=a.href.replace(/([?&])q=[^&]*|
$/,function(f,b){return(b||"&")+"q="+encodeURIComponent(d)})};function
l(a,d,f)
{a.display=h?"none":"block";a.left=d+"px";a.top=f+"px"}c.tg=function(a){var
d=0,f=0,b,m=0,n,j=window.navExtra,k,i=document;g=g||
i.getElementById("gbar").getElementsByTagName("span");(a||
window.event).cancelBubble=!m;if(!e){e=i.createElement(Array.every||
window.createPopup?"iframe":"DIV");e.frameBorder="0";e.scrolling="no";e.src="#";g[7].parentNode.appendChild(e).id="gbi";if(j&&g[7])for(n
in j)
{k=i.createElement("span");k.appendChild(j[n]);g[7].parentNode.insertBefore(k,g[7]).className="gb2"}i.onclick=c.close}while(b=g[++m

It's be great if google would get back to 'lil ol me faithful customer of 10 years.

EDIT: A friend has forwarded this message too them for me.

EDIT: and we're back, this has been ~5 hours of google shame. I never was contacted...

EDIT: Finally contacted

Thank you for your note. We appreciate your sending us a screenshot.
Clearing your browser's cache can resolve a number of problems you may be
experiencing while using Google or other sites on the web. Below you'll
find instructions for clearing your cache in Internet Explorer (IE) 6,
IE7, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and earlier, and Mozilla Firefox 2.0: ...

I guess google doesn't Read what I say either, because I told them that I tried different browsers and different machines.

ext3 defaults update and grub breaks

GRUB vs. the Inodes: Who Needs a Bootable System, Anyway?

So apparently ext3 decided to bump the default inode size to 256 however grub 0.97 can't boot this and grub people aren't about to fix it because they are working on grub 2. Yeah that sounds about right... don't maintain your existing code base even though your next product isn't out yet.

Amarok is doing this too, it's quite annoying, and very poor develompment practice. Features are one thing but maintenance is another. You know what's bad? Grub 2 was in development 2 years ago if I remember right. Maybe I should add grub to Maintenance Required Since it's current maintainers don't want to fix system breaking bugs.

And shame on the extents devs for changing it in the first place....

recipe for success

Example 1

In 2003, an Internet meme known as "How You Remind Me of Someday", or "Nickelback to Back", was created to illustrate the similarities between the songs "How You Remind Me" and "Someday".

In response, bass player Mike Kroeger said "I think that's remarkable for someone to notice that there is a hit quality. If all hits sound the same, then sorry. When you are a band that has a distinct style such as us or AC/DC, that happens. When you have a distinct style, you run the risk of sounding similar."

--Wikipedia (NickelBack)

Example 2
Batman vs The Dark Knight Trailer

So the Question is? is there actually a recipe for success?

is there a difference between short term, medium term, and long term success? How is it that the Parthenon is greater than the Empire State Building (or even the tallest building currently being constructed) Why has Beethoven and Mozart survived the Centuries but Michael Jackson (Prince of Pop) couldn't survive the decades.

Could we analyze and find formula's for success perhaps there are more Golden Ratio's.

Making secure recoverable passwords

For the basic you need a calculator with a decimal to hex function. Your OS should have one built in (scientific mode), many calculator's do to. For advanced you'll need special hashing software, suggestions for it can be found below.

Windows	HashCalc
Macintosh	MacHash
Linux/(*nix)	Gnu Coreutils

Now that we have the software we need. You'll need an 8 digit (minimum) number that you won't forget. Guess what numbers fit the bill perfectly. Dates. All date's can be expressed in 8 digits, but they require a year. The date we'll use (for example) is Linux's Birthday. August 25, 1991 (I recommend something more personal like your anniversary or birthday).

So we are going to write down the date we picked for the password (note we aren't done yet).

something like

Linux BDay

Date's can be formatted in several ways, Just make sure to remember the numeric format you use. For our example we'll use the ISO 8601 standard. Which leaves our example date in format, YYYYMMDD, looking like 19910825.

So let's make a note of the format (to throw people off use a diff format say DDMMYYYY).

Linux Bday ISO

whatever you do make sure YOU understand your note, but that it isn't easily understandable by OTHERS.

alright... now we're going to take our number and make it hex. So open your calculator enter 19910825, then use the convert to hex function and you should have this 12FD0A9 (if you aren't using our example you may have a different 'number', or it may not be displayed exactly like this, display's vary between calculators). This is your first basic password. you can use it as is, or you can make it a bit more secure by using one of the hexadecimal notations. example: 0x12FD0A9. You can add a word or funny characters to either side of it to make it stronger too, just make sure to note anything you add to it.

Due to a Rainbow Table database you should make sure your password is at least 8 characters but I would recommend no less than 9.

But your hex number is less than 9 and what do the programs you listed have to do with this?

good point... let's make something a bit more crypto and less predictable.

Take the same date and plug it in to your hash creator, I'm going to use an md5sum for my first example.

if you put 19910825 into md5sum you get 6f9822851dfc6c1045c6fef827e5d729 (for you nix people enter the number like this 'echo -n "19910825" | md5sum'
on the cli otherwise you might end up with newline issues because different operating systems use different newlines).

so lets say you need an 12 character password you could just use the first 12 characters of your hash, example: 6f9822851dfc if you need an 8, example: 6f982285 ,etc etc.

if a stupid 'cracker' or black hat hacker get his hands on your actual password he might think he hasn't decrypted it fully because it'll look like a hash or memory error. want to throw people off even more just remember you aren't using the first 8 but the first 8 after the first 2 example 9822851d.

Or use a different has like sha1 or sha512.

Ultimately you could make your note to yourself like this

Sha1LinuxBDayISO to a non IT person this will look like a random password as is.

Also the cryptographic hashes take words too. So you could do your name. Caleb into an md5sum is

9ced73b8525de1db8e232ad575baa9dd

but it's different if I use caleb.

2f0154d7db348840676529dd72f1c034

if you always enter them the same you will always get the same result back. I guarantee after a couple days typing your new password you won't need to have it written down. If you work at a place that requires things like monthly changes.. just put the date you changed it on in to create the hash. Just make sure no one knows but the number/word(s) you used and the hash you used or they will be able to duplicate your password. Of course you're smart and you added somthing to it right? like a symbol (!@#$%^*{}|:"<>?[]\;',./) will all work find if the auth methods allow it.

have fun never having a hard time creating passwords again.

Tracking your home directory with a VCS

Josh Carter has done some interesting benchmarking in this area.

His tests include Subversion, Mercurial, Git, and Bazaar

More Advice to a Young Developer

More Advice to a Young Developer

I think most of it applies to IT In general or even the world at large.