[Gllug] Cost of RedHat vs Ubuntu desktop support

[Jose Luis Martinez]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Hari Sekhon<hpsekhon at googlemail.com> wrote:

>
> The point I was making was it was expensive to go this route for
> desktops, which it is. This is one reason why most organizations stick
> to M$ desktops, the exception being IT folks who can install and support
> their own workstations.
>
> I can't blame redhat for shunning the desktop market, it's not that easy
> to turn a profit from it, and I have to say they continue to go from
> strength to strength as a profitable company, so best of luck to them.
>
> Would you want to pay $900 *every year for every desktop machine* in
> your organization? C'mon... and people talk about the never ending
> treadmill of M$, this would be a more expensive and faster moving
> treadmill, I don't know how many accountants or IT staff would thank you
> for that...
>


Nope, organizations stick to Windows in the desktop because the
workgroup features of the Exchange-Outlook duopoly are deemed
necessary to the operations of many companies (this is a debatable
point, but that is the way it is).

As soon as serious back office operations are considered, I have
witnessed people far more knowledgeable than yours truly dump Windows
like a hot potato (lack of escalation, hidden "features", bad security
decisions like dumping important stuff in the Registry, etc).

We are entering the nebulous territory of TCO (Total Cost of
Ownership), so first you have to factor the cost of all the software
in your computer, to start in an even field you would have to exclude
all the applications, both third party and MS's, because MS is not
going to support your copy of PhotoShop, and being honest, a Windows
machine without all that software is of not much use, in the other
hand Ubuntu (or any other Linux for that matter) comes with most stuff
you may need to do a lot of productive work.  Right there you may be
killing one or two years of MS's support per machine.

Then you have to add the support for all your third party applications
in Windows. For starters anti virus and firewall (just there a cool
$60 or $70) and from there, the sky is the limit. With Linux you get
supported for all the stuff that comes with your distro.

Next, this is anecdotal of course, and I have only my own personal
experience attesting to this, but the ratio of computers per
administrator is much higher with Linux than with Windows. I have seen
full teams administering a couple of Exchange servers while a couple
of guys can administer a UNIX/Linux based email or groupware group of
servers (and this as one of many other tasks they may be doing). So if
you manage to save the salary of one administrator then  you could
transfer that cost to your support contract with Ubuntu.

I would say that each shop should asses what they need,  comparing
only the support price is most likely an incomplete assessment of how
much your systems cost (and we have not even approached the importance
of using infrastrucutre that ensures your data remains yours,  not
sequestered by the propietary formats of a company that does not have
your interests at heart).
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