Software

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Open-Source Vs. Proprietory Software

0 helpful
18 replies

by deeseddie

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hi, I'm new here at TechRepublic and here is my 1st discussion. Do you believe that Open-Source software is better or Proprietary. Let me just use this list of Operating Systems and Office Suites to compare.

Operating Systems

Open Source- Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Interprid Ibex
Proprietary- Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium

Office Suites

Open Source- OpenOffice
Proprietary- Microsoft Office 2007

I would prefer Open-Source because the developers always seek improvement in their software. Are more open to new ideas and will let anybody work on these projects that are good at programming.

On the improvement behave why do you think the a new version of Ubuntu is released every 6 to 12 months. Even with security updates and enhancements the structure of the Operating System becomes antiquated overtime. Just look at Windows XP and then Vista. Even if besides the glossy look Vista is a disappointment.

I honestly believe the way things are going Open-Source Software will level out with proprietary software in 10 years.

However I still believe Microsoft will have a lot of say in the new Open-Source field due to these couple of qualities.

1]Microsoft created the 1st Massively- Distributed OSe's.

2]Microsoft created the GUI most OSe's use today

3]Bill Gates was a great programmer and businessman.

4]The NT 5.0 Windows OSe's where just unquestionably great dispute a few security issues. Which where already ironed out the the OS line. Along with the fact that Internet Security has grown to the point that there is now free Internet Security Software. Avast to name a few.

5] Microsoft still has the support from the public and the corporations.[Including Programmers.] So the likelihood of developers programming for a different OS without getting paid one dime will keep programmers on Microsoft's side. Which in terms means the public.

18 replies

by nicknielsen

The way things usually work around here, somebody will start a discussion by expressing their opinion and their reasons for holding that opinion. Thus my question for you: Which combination do you prefer and why? Maybe that will get some discussion started.

Personally, I prefer the Intrepid Ibex and OpenOffice for two reasons. First, they cost much, much less than the Windows/Office combination and I'm a cheap sumbitch. Second, given Microsoft's track record for both operating systems and applications and the observations that the Aero interface is nothing more than a fluffy resource hog and that the ribbon (for me) gets in the way more often than not, I've come to believe that Microsoft is more interested in form than function.

by deeseddie

Actually Microsoft didn't get a bad track record until Windows Vista. Besides US Vs. Microsoft case and security issues with the OS itself. Even Windows ME had quite a few fans because the other-all stability was better than Win98SE with the only subtraction being Real-Mode DOS. Even the Court-Case was just because a bunch of overzealous liberals saw that Microsoft dominated the market by being the best O.S and brought Microsoft to court.

by nicknielsen

[i]...Microsoft didn't get a bad track record until Windows Vista.[/i]

Excuse me? Is what you're smoking legal? Microsoft has had a bad track record with IT pros for at least the last two decades. Even [u]if[/u] you excuse the security issues and anti-trust lawsuit, their public track record isn't much better over the last 15 years. For example, MS has been under investigation by the US government or operating under a consent decree for anti-competitive practices in some way, shape or form since 1990 (George H.W. Bush was in office, which pretty much puts the lie to your "overzealous liberals" remark).
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2002/11/35212

So "Microsoft dominated the market by being the best O.S"? First, Microsoft is the company, Windows is the OS. Second, do you really believe the restrictive covenants in MS' agreements with OEMs had nothing to do with Windows' domination of the market? Do you think the mistakes made by MS' competitors had nothing to do with it? Please. You're entitled to be as stupid as you like, but letting your feelings blind you to facts surpasses stupidity and achieves idiocy.

edit: corrected dates, added link

by charliespencer

"Actually Microsoft didn't get a bad track record until Windows Vista."

Microsoft's reputation has waxed and waned many times over the years. MS-DOS 4.0 was the first example I can recall of an MS product causing the company grief. Later some twit decided it was a good idea to push NT 4.0 on laptops; it wasn't. ME's fans were far outnumbered by it's detractors who stuck with W98 until W2K came along. Let's not even discuss Microsoft Bob, the "Star Wars Christmas Special" of MS products. New MS Office releases are usually ignored for years by everyone except consumers, and the suite is now the textbook definition of 'bloatware'.

"Microsoft dominated the market by being the best O.S"

Okay, now you're just drinking Kool-Aid. MS dominates the OS market through contractual agreements with hardware vendors, a strong marketing campaign, Apple's decision to close it's hardware architecture, and lack of consumer awareness of the alternatives.

by tony hopkinson

MS's track record has been crap since they dominated the market. Quality is the most expensive competitive advantage to gain and maintain. No sane businessman is going to do so when they do not need to. MS have not needed to for well over a decade.

Worse still they didn't gain their advantage through technical quality in the first place.

They gained it through sound business thinking.

The only reason products such as Visual Studio are high quality, is they had real competition.
Borland made MS look like total incompetents for years, until MS solved the problem by buying the people who were doing it. They were ones who gave us .NET, and a version of VS that could use it.

Windows best OS, on what basis. Where does it win over the alternatives?

by dumphrey

that MS is not in the market of making software for consumers. MS is in the market of making revenue for stockholders, software is just the tool.
Most IT have seen and recognized this. MS makes a product that's "good enough" for its target audience, and continues to make money through upgrade and lock-in, OEM deals, and advertising aimed at consumer and utility users. ("Mojave is really Vista!") This is how closed-source makes its money.
Competing based on quality alone has long since ceased to be the case in most product markets (A quick wave to BOSE here).

by tony hopkinson

If it were as simple as the development model, you would not have to ask the question would you?

My personal opinion, is that there will always be some higher quality open source offerings than any closed source ones, for all but the most niche of applications.

Whether you need and can 'afford' that quality is of course the question.

By the way,
It's open vs closed, you can be proprietory and open.

by deeseddie

Well lets just put it this way. Some of the biggest Microsoft Fans if seen out IT Pros in the Public School System. Have a big huge corporation down in Tampa with 500+ employees. Heck a lot of this network admins will never use Firefox because of certain security holes & compatibility standards. [As well as the fact Firefox hogs more memory.]Students in a public school system can also get around Websense using proxies in Firefox. However thats not me and I do choose to use Ubuntu, Firefox & so on. Even more so than Microsoft Products.

Oh about the liberal remark. I will not apologize for that. Look at how all these companies got bought up by the government. If a corporation ceases to exist it dies. There will be new corporations popping up within a few years. The Bail-out was a liberal issue. Just like limiting free-market & law suiting anybody who shows good business practice. Trust me, Microsoft didn't even get close to doing what Standard Oil company did in the late 1800's. Microsoft got to where they where out by aggressive marketing & really sweet deals with OEM's.

I'm politically just a Moderate. However I do have common since behind what the government is doing.

by charliespencer

Dude, 500 employees is NOT a "huge corporation".

"...a lot of this network admins will never use Firefox because of certain security holes..."

Just so long as they realize there are even more holes in IE.

"...Firefox hogs more memory."

I won't disagree with you when you're right.

by nicknielsen

I refuse to participate in a battle of wits with an unarmed man. But I will attempt to confuse you with facts.

- Schools use Microsoft products because they can purchase them from state contracts without going through the otherwise mandatory competitive bidding process. It's not a matter of better, but of easier. Been there, done that.

- Firefox uses more memory because it's not partially integrated into the OS. Microsoft insists that IE is part of the OS; ever wonder how much of what IE requires to run is loaded as part of the initial Windows load?

- The holes in Firefox are fewer and more rapidly repaired than the holes in IE.

- If a student can even access a proxy server, no matter the browser, Websense isn't properly configured. That's an admin issue, not a browser issue. Again, been there, done that

As for the bailout, the TARP was initiated by Bush administration appointees to save politically connected incompetents.

by deeseddie

You are absolutely right. However a lot of people have upgraded to Office 2007 though. The school I go to had to due to a new agreement with Dell. That the school system ditches IBM/Lenovo's with Intel Processors for Dells with AMD Processors in order to save $50 per Workstation.

Very few companies I see use a version of Microsoft Office before 2002. Some would use versions as old as Office 97. However most Corporations/Consumers I've seen use 2003+.

Another thing, Windows ME was released 8 months after Windows 2000. So what you mean is most people waited out till Windows XP.

Oh and about the bloatware. Microsoft has some of the least resource consuming products out there. Look at OpenOffice. It takes up so much memory on a 2.5Ghz Pentium D w/ 512MB Memory that it closes scanline per scanline. Office 2007 runs beautifully on a 1.4 Ghz PIII w/ 384MB Memory.

The only Office Suite thats lighter on resources is Corel WordPerfect Suite but I don't believe anybody even knows about that program anymore.

by tony hopkinson

of a non ms application with an equivalent ms one, except in terms of the extra resource load required by whatever you are operating on, for instance a document or worksheet.

A good proportion of the functionality comes in the OS and is already loaded in dlls and such.
FF3 according to windows itself uses twice as much memory as IE7 to view this page. Now either IE7 is developed to be twice as good as FF3, or something else is going on...

Let,s see now, which one is integrated into the OS, and exactly what form would that integration take in a monolithic design?

And no FF could not have made the same decsions. It would have required a lot of closed source knowledge, it would have meant taking on some of MS's from a technical point of view more stupid designs, it would have limited them to one platform, and last but not least put them completely at MS's mercy.

HtHs

by charliespencer

"Microsoft has some of the least resource consuming products out there. Look at OpenOffice. It takes up so much memory ..."

That's relative. Using less memory than another hog doesn't mean you don't still use a ton of resources. However, I was using the term 'bloatware' in the sense of taking up a massive amount of hard drive space (another type of resource) to include more and more features no one wanted, asked for, or uses.

by neon samurai

I'm curious to know what school it is that you attend.

Anyhow, with VMware, I can run a Mandriva or Debian VM with 256 to 512 meg of ram assigned. I usually use 512 unless it's just a quick testing VM. I then get about three VMs booted now using 1.5 gig of ram assigned. I then remote into the VMs and start doing my work. The VM with X installed and running doesn't run any slower than the other two which you'd never guess where virtual machines crammed in my desktop alongside others.

I can open two Windows VMs. 512 meg of ram is the minimum I can assign them and have them still usable. That's a total of 1 gig assigned across two VMs. I remote into them with rdesktop and they are fairly responsive with just the hint of being remote connections; provided I'm only using one at a time. If one has to think heavily, the other and rest of my machine feels the performance drag.

Now, that's three VMs at 1.5 gig ram working with no noticeable performance hit while under load compared to two VMs at 1.0 gig of ram working with noticeable performance reduction when either of them is under load. Again, that's 256 to 512 meg of ram and comfortable versus 512 min and 1024 meg ram to be comfortable.

Let's try something different. I take the same Windos VM stored on a fat32 partition. I take the same version of VMware for Windows and Mandriva and install it on both bootable partitions. I boot each and one the same VM from that commonly accessible fat32 partition.

Under Windows, the VM responds like a fast modem connection with PCanywhere. The mouse movement clearly shows that it's a remote desktop though it remains responsive to work with.

Under Mandriva, that same VM responds as if it was native. When made fullscreen, you wouldn't realize it was running overtop of a host OS.

This test was done with winXP pro sp3 and Mandriva 2008.1 on an intel quad core beside 4 gig of ram and sata drives. The partition with the VM was on a separate drive from the two bootable OS.

Excel and IE both break under heavy RAM usage due to poor memory management. I used to have either and often both lockup simply because I had more than two spreadsheets open. (IE begins to hang on "connecting to website ..." and Excel begins to hang when recalculating cell formulas.)

Damn Small Linux provides a full graphic desktop and suite of default applications that can be used comfortably on 256 meg of ram in a Pentimum2; what is the minimum hardware you would install winXP sp3 on and how much other software would you include? (they are both equally up to date in versions and patches)

by deeseddie

Lets see here. Linux is lighter usually due to the fact that the O.S itself is very much a watchdog. Where you would have to manually install just about everything in the O.S. Windows a lot of programs could be automatic due to activex controls and programs that use an interface similar to windows update. Leading to a huge security risk. Also Linux installs very little by default meaning faster speeds when it comes to installing and running. Even the most bloated of distros like Ubuntu are not a disaster on system resources.

I used Windows XP SP3 on a 300Mhz Celeron w/ 256MB PC100 Memory & a 6 GB Hard Drive. It wasn't too slow. It actually ran faster than both Win98SE & 2000 did. I also used Avast Antivirus instead of the bloated AVG or Norton. I also watched out if any programs I have instead made Startup Programs that reside in the System Clock. [Most people don't do that. Then they wonder why the computer is slow and unresponsive.]

I personally am on neither side. Some systems work better with Linux, some with Windows. Also depends which one has the drivers that your computer needs.

Microsoft Windows was never really designed for the virtual environment. Thats why an HP Pavillion 2000ZE Laptop w/ 512MB Memory with an WIN98SE Virtual Box will run as slow as an early Pentium. Even with all the drivers and an emulation of 128MB Memory. [VMWare is the one I use.]

by vindasel

As long as it works, I don't care if it's proprietary or open source. If it's free, awesome....but I don't mind paying for features and stability.

I currently use mostly proprietary software TBH; on my personal systems you'll find XP, MS Office, Opera, Adobe CS3 suite etc; all of which work properly for me, and I wouldn't want to switch unless there's real benefit to me.

by neon samurai

My Windows and Mandriva systems are very comparible since I try to mirror functions across platforms and prefer to use software that has a build for each applicable platform.

As a general build equivalent to my other working environments, I can use a VM these days so I have one of those setup as well.

Now, the benefit that I enjoy on my system is needing Windows directly against the hardware for only a few specialized programs plus gaming. That means I can tune the Windows install as much as possible for gaming and know that cain will run just fine when it is needed. For gaming, I need the kernel, driver support for the hardware including video, audio and controllers, directX between kernel/drivers and game software.. and, of course, the game. Why must I install all the extra default services then go through and disable them? I don't need a telnet deamon but it's right there waiting with 'service startup manual' beside it.

I can install winXPsp3 on my CF27 but just the weight of the desktop plus the minimum protective software is going to slow the machine down; usable, but not comfortable. I can install drop a Linux based distro on there meant for running on light resources like Xubuntu or something I prefer more. Heck, I could leave it in the corner with only Linux (meaning the kernel), the userland layers above that and Apache. Instant webserver. With windows, I can't just install the NT kernel, minimal cli userland and IIS; I have to install the full graphic glot of the OS/distro.

ActiveX is a broken technology on it's own. It provides some benefits but being that deeply twisted into IE, and by extension, the kernel with no real separation of privileged is not worth the trade-offs.

Mind you, when I'm interacting with Windows machines on the network, I'll use a Windows workstation. When interacting with any of the *nix machines, I'll use a *nix workstation. I'd love to have ssh control over my Windows workstations like I have between *nix machines but Windows too Windows is still the better match for some tasks.

This discussion is closed to new replies.