Only a fool would believe a Microsoft study after this!

This Microsoft-sponsored Microsoft-engineered report caught my eye, but 
a few things in it really were outstanding, and I mean outstanding like 
large lime green and orange paint squares chequerboarded onto a Rolls.

    http://www.veritest.com/clients/reports/microsoft/mssmbiz.pdf

The "Linux consultants" mentioned in this study wanted 24 programmer 
hours to be able to automatically email out server stats?

    unlike Windows SBS 2003, the monitoring and reporting solution
    used for Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES did not support sending
    performance and usage reports to an email address at regular
    intervals. Linux consultants estimated that this support could
    be added through custom scripting at a cost of 24 hours of
    development time.

urpmi wget metamail
cat > send-usage-updates.sh
    #!/bin/sh
    #
    # send usage charts by email
    # works OOtB for MRTG, RRDtool and Webalizer but for the URL
    # might want to change to and from addresses to suit
    #
    SCRATCH=/tmp/stats-$!.tmp
    mkdir $SCRATCH
    cd $SCRATCH
    wget -nH -nd -p http://url.of.stats/page/index.html
    metasend -F tux-AT-propaganda.morons.inc -z -t billg-AT-morons.inc \
      -s "Stats for $(hostname) at $(date)" -e base64 -b \
      -D "Stats for $(hostname) at $(date)" -f index.html -m text/html \
      $(ls *.png | gawk '{ print "-n -m image/x-png -D image -f",$1 }'
    cd
    rm -rf $SCRATCH

Seventeen minutes including testing ("yup, them's my server stats"), 
while doing other stuff in background. Gawrsh, that was hard. AUD$34.00 
at my normal rates, except I have a one-hour minimum.

I guess I have to charge AUD$120.00*24*60/17 == AUD$10165.00 an hour for 
programming time now, to stay on the same efficiency level as 
Microsoft's amazing Linux consultants.

If our performance ratios are generalisable, it would have taken me two 
minutes and three steps to do the Linux OEM install, three minutes and 
four steps for the full install (roughly 29 and 75 times faster than 
Microsoft SBS 2003, respectively).

I'm not quite that good, just ask anyone who knows me, but experience 
tells me that whacking in an enterprise edition of Mandrake 9.1 as far 
as Step 1 with Yes against every single feature listed for both 
platforms, plus a whole lot more, takes about 35 minutes for a single 
internet domain on a dual P3-1000 box with 2GB of RAM and paired 18GB 
SCSI hard drives.

With Wayne's permission, I can show you that box running thin clients 
today. This is not a theory.

I'm not a Red Hat fan, but I don't understand how Microsoft's testers 
managed to *avoid* Red Hat's installation wizard - maybe it didn't have 
"Wizard" printed all over it, or had more than one choice per page? 
Shrug.

Again I can't speak for Red Hat, but setting up a DHCP server on 
Mandrake is one checkbox in DrakConnect. If ("Ooh, Lordy, Lordy! Oh, 
please, Brer Fox, don't make me edit the config file!") I had to edit a 
DHCP config, it's all of - what, six or eight lines of code? Horrors!

I feel compelled to ask this: is a person incapable of doing or 
unwilling to do that very simple chore the kind of person you want 
running your Internet-exposed servers? Really?

As for wizards reducing download/install times for new packages, even 
Red Hat's very boring GUI package manager must have been too awesome 
for these skilled testers to dirty by touching. It sounds kind of like 
they were drag-racing against a sleigh in summer.

I must admit, however, that Windows SBS 2003 does win on Step 3, "Build 
an intranet web site for information worker collaboration". Sounds 
impressive, doesn't it? Um, question for VeriTest: how do zero steps 
occupy seven minutes and nineteen seconds?

Putting up a Wiki or PostNuke does involve either opening a shell and 
typing a short one-liner or 5 clicks to accomplish (either 29 or 17 
times more efficient than their "Linux consultants").

Again I'm pressed to ask: isn't Windows constantly getting into hot 
water for having services switched on by default? Why then is it a good 
thing that SBS 2003 arrives with them enabled?

I'm also wondering how "urpmi vncviewer rdesktop openssh-server" and the 
installation of PuTTY and TightVNC on the XP workstation managed to 
chew up over 100 minutes for VeriTest's Linux gurus. That's all you 
need to do to complete Step 4 on Mandrake, maybe twenty seconds for the 
server and three or four minutes on the XP workstation for full 
connectivity both ways.

You could even add vnc2swf to that urpmi line and make Flash movies of 
the XP box doing stuff while you waited for the Microsoft guys to win 
the battle with their wizards.

Maybe I should apply for a job at VeriTest? I could charge triple time 
and they'd still save buckets of money on consultants.

It seems the war of words has degenerated here into a war of headlines. 
Anyone looking at the details with half a brain will be either totally 
gobsmacked or laughing too hard to protest. It seems that either 
VeriTest have shifted their research labs into the Ministry of Truth 
building - and no longer seriously claim objectivity - or their 
calendar is six months out of sync.

This only serves to throw Forrester's recent decision to actively avoid 
participating in such charades into sharper relief. It's nice to see 
that at least a few consultancies still take their audience seriously.

Cheers; Leon

-- 
http://cyberknights.com.au/     Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/       Committee Member, Perth Linux User Group
http://slpwa.asn.au/            Committee Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://linux.org.au/            Committee Member, Linux Australia