Guest ThunderRiver Posted July 18, 2003 Share Posted July 18, 2003 Quote from WinInfo Daily Update Remember that story about the city of Munich, Germany, choosingLinux to power 14,000 desktop computers? One aspect of this story thatmost people don't know about is that as many as 80 percent of thoseLinux desktops will be equipped with VMware, a virtual machineemulator, which the PCs will use to run Windows and Microsoftapplications. That's right, folks: The majority of those "Linuxdesktops" will run ... Windows. I'm not a big fan of Gartner, but theresearch firm issued a report, correctly titled "Munich's ChoiceDoesn't Prove Linux OK for General Desktop Use," that raises someinteresting questions. First, many of the Windows desktops Munichmigrated are extremely old Windows versions, such as Windows 3.1,making the switch to Linux less painful (which is about as painful asswitching to Windows XP). Gartner says that switching to Linux willcost 30 million euros, or 3 million euros more than it would cost toswitch to XP, not including any steep discounts Microsoft would haveno doubt provided. And, finally, because most of the Linux machineswill use VMware to run Windows, anyway, Linux will really be used as ahosting environment, not as a replacement. In other words, Munichdoesn't exactly represent a good business case on which othercompanies can base a decision to migrate to Linux desktops. And, notcoincidentally, that's why we aren't reading about a lot of otherhigh-profile Linux switchers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted July 18, 2003 Share Posted July 18, 2003 Previous Post by Marsden 11 quoted this earlier........ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbredmound Posted July 19, 2003 Share Posted July 19, 2003 Well, if that's not a kick in the pants! Who will actually be the first to do it...not half-way it. Why in the world would you spend more money to have some hybrid thing that probably won't ever run well?Is the perceived lack of applications the problem here? If so, they could find (or request from the community) applications a lot more economically than doing this!How very smart M$ is! I wondered for a long time what was really "up" with their VM stuff, and now I see... A M$ machine by any other name,,,is a M$ machine... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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