choosing linux over windows
 

hello,

this would appear to be my first post here!, i have used linux before and now generally prefer it over windows. i would like to now replace my current employers webserver with a linux box ( it currently runs windows ( :-( ) )

however i am having trouble convincing them to make the switch, i need more of an arguement, something more than, ' its free, and its better '

i am aware of the obvious benefits like its does not crash, but i need to blind them with something big that would tip the scales.

i was thinking of the amount of bugs that exist in windows compared to linux ( ? )

has any one here had that problem of convincing some one to switch? or does some one have a few links with some great comparisons on?

please post them here !
thanks

_____________
the Posting Penguin

I convinced my friends with screen shots. Lots of screen shots of apps. Even if the person it not interested in graphics or looks, it still helps.

Article on downtimes
It's not brand-new but was very well-researched :}

Plus, with things like the quite recent slapper-attack
(I know slapper goes after SQL Server, not the web-thing)
I think that the figure is still similar ;) ...

Cheers,
Tink

P.S.: Been googling some more ... ;)
Breakins
Total cost of Ownership
More TCO
Ad :)

well Linux has tons more programs than windows (if not more they r free), also linux is alot more stable and can handle heavier loads than windows. Also Apache runs on it (I know it runs on windows too, but it aint as good as it is on linux)

I think its best to use examples to illustrate the power of Linux. Let me give you an example.

At my last job during my interview, my boss was telling me how I would have complete control over things. During her lecture she added something that I found very funny. She said, "You have complete control over things. We just don't want you doing anything too crazy like installing Linux on our servers."

I love the fact that she said that. I decide to try and trick her into loving linux without even knowing it. I wrote a silly little php page that could be used to maintain the current employee's phone numbers. I did this because they were having problems keeping up to date with the latest employees phone numbers.

I showed it to all my co-workers including my boss and they loved it. They said things like "Wow that is so cool" and "I really like that. How did you do that?"

Now the genious of it comes in the answer. I said (and I'm no genious) "Well I wrote it on my Linux machine at home. We couldn't use it here."

You could see the gears turning in there heads. "Hmmm...maybe we should look at Linux."

The point of this is that people, especially management, want to see examples and results. The way I did it was by showing them something that they really wanted and then taking it away because they were so hooked on Microsoft.

At my last place of business, I was working as a net admin in a NetWare office. The company had been bought out by a larger company, and everything was moving towards Windoze, even though the NetWare servers never crashed and the Windoze boxen did.

I set up a Linux Web server on a 100MHz P5 Gateway box that was too slow to run Windoze (even 98) on the desktop, since the company's WAN gateway NT box had to be rebooted every morning or run into problems. I decided to create a new intranet for them to show them you could leave a box forever and it would still run. Their NT box would encounter dropped connections, no responses to http requests and a randomly malfunctioning Outlook Web Access.

13 months later (and 13 months of daily reboots for the NT box), I resigned, leaving the Linux intranet server still chugging along.

all these seem like good suggestions

i am currently using the method Crashed_Again suggested
give it to them and take it away, or just dont give it to them and complain of problems when scripting in php

just to give all these suggestions a kick, could any one tell me a site that tell me the frequency of security updates for windows systems compared with linux and security update frequencys for IIS compared with apache ( Please :-) )


i have just been reading some where on the web about the market share of web servers

apache is at 22,000,000 servers
and MS iis is at 1,000,000 a massive difference


once i have enough information and it has persuaded my employers to go to linux i will post some kind of document containing all the information and resources i used ( lets see if we can get a 'how to pursuade your employer to use linux' up on to the linux documentation project ;-)) )

any who, thank you for your suggestions and please please keep them coming

thanks
____________
posting_penguin

Well, I do know that when WinXP came out, there was a "catastrophic security flaw" (MS's own term for it) that they knew about, which was in XP when it shipped. It took them 7 weeks to release a patch, and they did not make a single person aware of it until they had created the patch.

Apache, on the other hand (and PHP, and most other OpenSource software, in general) has security holes revealed now and again. These revelations not only are released to the public so that everyone can prepare for the patch (or take extra precautions in the meantime), but patches are released within a week or so.

Sendmail had a huge hole the other week (Sendmail is used on a lot of Linux/Apache servers for FormMail and other things). The next day, there were patches available for all Linux distros, and even my MacOSX machine at work (which is FreeBSD-based).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is the attitude and responsiveness. You can choose a platform that hides any flaws for 7 weeks (leaving you unknowingly vulnerable with a self-admitted "catastrophic security flaw"), or you can use a platform that prides itself on how quickly people can find and fix security flaws, whose coders share knowledge freely and openly.

Also, don't forget that a common rule of thumb I've seen (fairly consistently for the past several years) for Web server implementation is you need up to 9 IIS servers to handle the load of each Linux/Apache server, and you need 1 IT professional per Windows server compared to 1 IT professional per 4 Linux servers.