I said what the good sysadmins that I know are like. I then qualified this by pointing out that the ones which I know work at companies that understand free software (so they don't have to worry about certain political games).

You may note that I do not know the sysadmins that you are sampling from. They may well be competent. But I don't know them.

Furthermore, speaking frankly, at this point I am not going to rely on your judgement of someone else's ability with computers. You have impressed me as someone who is longer on opinions than facts. And some of your opinions strike me as dangerously misguided.

So my data remains what I said. There are competent sysadmins out there who are gainfully employed and do not pull the kind of crap that you described. There may be sysadmins who are competent and do. I don't happen to be aquainted with any.

Regards,
Ben

I have your unsupported BS claims instead, which is very useless.

Let's get some sample numbers. I'll focus on a single large vendor because I can get numbers for HP. I think that their experience is telling about what is happening overall.

From [link|http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/investor/financials/quarters/2003/q3.html|http://www.hp.com/hp...ters/2003/q3.html] we see that HP includes Linux in their "Enterprise" space. A category that for the 3th quarter of 2003 was $3.71 billion. That is the same category as their Unix business, storage units, and so on. From [link|http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33746.html|http://www.technewsw.../story/33746.html] we find that according to IDC, in the same quarter HP got 28.1% of the revenue from selling Linux servers (that is servers pre-installed with Linux). Total revenue in that segment was $743 million, so HP's revenue from selling servers was about $209 million, or about 5.6% of their enterprise revenue.

Not bad, but it gets better. For we also find out that the year over year revenue growth in that Linux segment was 49.8%. If that continues, then the revenue numbers for Linux are going to get a lot juicier. Furthermore HP itself does not count things the same way that IDC does. As pointed out in [link|http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php?story=20040115100015615|http://www.linuxelec...20040115100015615], HP includes various service based revenue streams, totalling $2.5 billion in 2003. Which means that the straight server sales has to be a fraction of overall Linux revenue. Exactly what fraction I can't precisely calculate, but somewhere in the 1/4-1/3 range looks right.

In fact we can calculate what HP (a giant with many business lines, including desktop machines, printers, servers, consulting...) made of its total revenue from Linux. Their Linux revenue in 2003 was $2.5 billion. Their total revenue was $73 billion. That's 3.4%. (And that's growing rapidly!)

This suggests that Linux already has succeeded. Now it is only a question of how good that success will turn out to be.

The problems that Sun has been having fighting Linux underscore the fact that Linux really is a contender against traditional Unix. A large number of companies now have the attitude that they use Sun where they must to, and Linux where they can. The situations where Sun is required are quickly diminishing.

Of course to listen to you, none of this is happening. My experiences, the experiences of people that I know, the revenue numbers being posted - this all goes over your head. You are convinced that Linux is failing and will continue to do so unless we all sign up with the priorities that you claim are critical.

When you do that, you demonstrate that you do not have an opinion worth listening to.

So cut the crap. I gave you actual numbers. Either give me something concrete in response, or shut up on this topic.

Cheers,
Ben

As you said, I presented nice facts. Very relevantly, what I presented are facts. You can blather all that you want about what needs to happen for Linux to succeed. The fact is that it already is succeeding.

Now it is true that there are a lot of dysfunctional organizations out there that will not get the message. Such is life. In every major technology change that has been the case. Many places and people won't get the message for the better part of a decade.

However the numbers indicate that Linux is achieving mindshare already. Perception may not be on Linux's side in all organizations, but it is in enough already for commercial success. Your contrary unsupported rants notwithstanding.

Unless you manage to present something resembling a fact, that ends this discussion for me.

Regards,
Ben