Ballmer: Microsoft to go after Linux strongholds (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

Ballmer: Microsoft to go after Linux strongholds (ZDNet)

Posted Oct 21, 2005 7:47 UTC (Fri) by darthmdh (guest, #8032)
Parent article: Ballmer: Microsoft to go after Linux strongholds (ZDNet)

Steve "I'm going to f'ing kill people" Ballmer hasn't been locked up in gaol yet?

deliver better results at a lower cost

I fail to see how a 32-node ia32 system (32 nodes is the maximum Windows supports in a cluster) will achieve better results than any currently existing Linux-based supercomputer (let alone any future system by the time this version of Windows is retailed); considering many of them are 64-bit and contain many thousands of nodes. I call "bullshit" on this one. And at a lower cost? How do you get lower than "free"? Are Microsoft going to give us this software *and* a nice fat cheque as well, plus improve their support significantly so that it is at least equal to that in the open source community? Somehow I doubt it.

This is just ZDNet repeating Microsoft FUD and hyping vapourware as they are prone to do.

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Ballmer: Microsoft to go after Linux strongholds (ZDNet)

Posted Oct 21, 2005 15:50 UTC (Fri) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link]

How do you get lower than "free"?

The cost of an complex application running on a cluster has lot more to do with the development costs than the OS license costs. Sufficiently better tools could conceivably provide an overall lower cost.

Of course, with Linux et. al. you can modify the tools to suit your needs, instead of being stuck with what the vendor provides.