The rush to endorse open source alternatives to Microsoft’s dominant Windows software has been criticised by senior technology executives who warned that companies risked falling victim to growing hype around software such as the Linux operating system.
Not Time to Shut Windows Yet
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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linux/unix admins are on average paid much more than windows admins. total cost of ownership is thus about the same in many recent studies.
With Windows, you just install it once and it works, no need for constant maintanance. Linux on the other hand requires various commands to be typed to keep it running. Yes I know with Windows you have Windows Update and service packs, but I’ve had nothing but bad experience with those. So on my client’s systems I always install the “official” Windows XP and tell them not to use Windows Update. Apart from this issue I’ve found Windows to be completely trouble free.
TCO studies are horribly simplistic. If they tracked things from a USER perspective instead of a CIO perspective, maybe they would mean something. Your WinXP box crashes and corrupts your powerpoint presentation. What does it cost you? A day or more. What does it cost the CIO? Nada. Nothing. Zip.
You switch from Win to LINUX what does it cost you? not so much. What does it cost the CIO? Plenty in the short term: retraining, Installing, etc. In the LONG term– User and comapny save a bundle, but you’ll never track that in a Gartner study or the like. These guys are all on the MSFT payroll.
oh well, sure linux admins are paid more, they need to actually DO something and not just hit the reset button…
But do you know how much money your company looses when your systems are off for half a minute? Just think of mission critical services…
kindest regards,
John Doe
linux/unix admins are on average paid much more than windows admins
Then by your logic, you agree with the article.
“and tell them not to use Windows Update”
Are you totaly insane or what??
It’s people like you that spread viruses…
In this day and age i can’t belive you tell people that. In fact, it is better that Windows update craps on your PC than it becomes a bitch to a virus.
Idiot.
<< So on my client’s systems I always install the “official” Windows XP and tell them not to use Windows Update. >>
And then five days later they’re infected with 20 different worms / viruses?
emacs alone saved me a bunch of dollars with his integrated psychiatrist. At least as competent as his human collegue.
linux/unix admins are on average paid much more than windows admins. total cost of ownership is thus about the same in many recent studies.
Could you please tell my boss this. Judging from my last bank statement I don’t think he knows.
More propaganda to try to stop Linux. That these people are even addressing this issue shows me that Linux is even a bigger threat to the status quo than they are saying in public.
I think windows update, antivirus software, firewall, etc is a big scam. Its selling you protection you don’t need, like wearing a tinfoil hat to stop cosmic rays 🙂 I never use any of it and I’ve never had a virus, my system is 100% crash-free (except when my scanner driver crapped out, but a reinstall fixed that).
Linux on the other hand requires various commands to be typed to keep it running.
>>>>>>>>>>
Um, what? I’ve got a Linux web/ftp/ssh/samba/music server at home that’s been chugging along for more than a year. The only time I (well, my little brother) have to log in to type in commands (over ssh, of course
is when my cable connection goes out and he has to restart eth1. I could automate that, I suppose, but making him do things is easier than writing Python scripts 
So on my client’s systems I always install the “official” Windows XP and tell them not to use Windows Update.
>>>>>>>>>>
I think a whole bunch of your client’s machines have been 0wnzed and now keep throwing themselves against my firewall trying to infect my machines with blaster
Slammer is such an appropriate name…
With Windows, you just install it once and it works, no need for constant maintanance.
You obviously don’t run Windows. Windows requires maintanance, unless you like getting and spreading viruses. It also crashes more often that Linux; in my experience anyway.
Linux on the other hand requires various commands to be typed to keep it running.
You obviously don’t run Linux either. Moreso than Windows, once it is installed, Linux “just works”. No need to type commands to keep it going (other than installing patches, which you have to do on any OS).
Yes I know with Windows you have Windows Update and service packs, but I’ve had nothing but bad experience with those. So on my client’s systems I always install the “official” Windows XP and tell them not to use Windows Update.
Why not give us the names of those clients so we can proffer better consulting services to them.
Hey give me your phone number, I have a great piece of land to sell you in the moon!
Last week I got a new computer at the office. Windows XP, no security updates applied (for whatever reason). It took me less than 3 _minutes_ to get a beep-beep from the anti-virus software saying I had a blaster-type worm in it. All that before I even opened Outlook. That’s how good Windows is.
It’s the “next->next->next->OK” kind of sysadmins that both let viruses break free so easily and put the whole category (both good and bad ppl) under suspicion from the market.
The large numbers of Windows viruses, that hit companies all the time. I wonder how much it costs in lost time. With Linux, it’s possible to write a virus, but it’s not likely it will get very far. There is much more needed to be done to get infected with a virus on a Linux system then there is with a Windows box, and the much more is on the user-end. So unless your an idiot and run with Root(which you shouldn’t be admining in the first place), then you should have no problem. If there is any root exploitable exploit, well they’re patched very quickly so keep up with the patches.
Linux maybe more cost effective in a large-scale enviroment, since Linux admins while costing more, also can handle more servers than an MCSE. However I’m user there are plenty of benefits for any size, with Linux or any other free alternative.
Bravo sir, A skilled troll you are. I almost bit and replied, that is until I scanned back up and noticed your name.
“Linux on the other hand requires various commands to be typed to keep it running”
Ever heard of cron?
“The criticism comes as several big companies, including Telstra and Coles Myer, experiment with Linux systems in the hope of finding cheaper alternatives to running Windows on desktop personal computers and network servers.”
I find the above statement odd. They are critizing companies for moving to Linux, yet the intro of there article is based on the idea that compaines are ‘thinking’ of moving to Linux. So, its bad to consider alternatives?
Man, these guys are scared…
<em>”If you look at that particular debate [of Windows versus Linux] one of the things you have to talk about is the cost of the operating system and what it offers,” Mr Boyles said.
“If you look at the total cost of ownership of operating systems it is typically less than 10 per cent of the cost of running the system. So to have a Linux versus Windows debate around cost is pretty nonsensical.”</em>
Even after 20 years of preaching, some people still think free software is “free as in beer”. Of course the cost of the OS box is nothing for a big company. It should be obvious by now that the lower cost of Linux is not because you can download it for free, but because it’s safer and more stable.
“”Linux on the other hand requires various commands to be typed to keep it running”
I’m just curious what he means by ‘various commands’. ‘ls’? ‘df’? ‘reboot’?
It should be obvious by now that the lower cost of Linux is not because you can download it for free, but because it’s safer and more stable.
That is a matter of debate on both fronts, especially if you don’t have a Linux admin who doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing – you’ll probably get rooted in no time.
As for me, I can keep a Windows box up and running forever, but not Linux. Of course, I’ll readily admit that’s because I don’t know my way around Linux very well; my point is that saying ‘Linux’ (as in the OS) is more stable as a generalization isn’t entirely accurate.
You obviously don’t run Windows. Windows requires maintanance, unless you like getting and spreading viruses. It also crashes more often that Linux; in my experience anyway.
My installation of Windows 3.1 was rock solid … but that isn’t an OS so I doubt it counts
What i dislike about Windows isn’t the crashing, (I have had Linux crash many times on me), but it’s the viruses that take advantage of security holes. I had it updated when it came out, but I helped the users in the aftermath of the lovesan/blaster virus. Working with computers for a living isn’t as fun as I used to think
My problems with crashing on Linux wasn’t Linux’s fault(the kernel is rock solid), it’s normally software that just locks up X solid. Pray I can get to another console to kill X and start agian
First time i see someone say that Linux was based on Unix.
SCO must have sponsored the blurb…
>>TCO studies are horribly simplistic. <<
I could not agree more. Also, such studies are easy to rig, and often are rigged. In truth, it’s mostly situational. Sometimes windows has the lowest tco, sometimes not.
Come on guys let’s all have chuckle here because obviously this Slammer guy is being sarcastic.
<<linux/unix admins are on average paid much more than windows admins. >>
I have always gotten the same price per hour for fixing Windows and Linux problems though Windows Clients usually get bigger bills. I have found from past job offers is that small Windows and Linux shops offer about the same wage for admins. It is the admins that have Unix experience that can easily demand and get higher wages on a regular basis.
<<With Windows, you just install it once and it works, no need for constant maintanance>>
I administer a Computer system for a Non-profit with 30 windows computers – you can bet at least once a month someone somewhere is doing something to clobber their Windows system. In ten months I have had to deal with 8 severely messed up systems – 5 to the point that a reinstall was required. The reason is simple – a person using Windows must run in admin mode or some programs will not run right. He## even the Win2k Servers require constant looking after.
Is an obvious troll.
Your WinXP box crashes and corrupts your powerpoint presentation. What does it cost you?
As opposed to Linux where… ?
There simply isn’t a good open source alternative to PowerPoint. KPresenter is a buggy and incomplete usability nightmare. The only program rivaling PowerPoint at the present time is Apple’s Keynote, which is also full of its share of bugs.
Also, the scenario you give is ludicrous. We have a dozen Windows XP systems here (we’re primarily Solaris) and I am yet to see a bluescreen on any of them. I have had a single XP bluescreen on my system at home. Likewise, I’ve only seen Solaris kernel panic once (which produced a corefile that thanks to the scrubber I was able to ascertain that CPU 0 of the system was bad… try that with Linux) Meanwhile, I have seen a host of Linux kernel panics, lockups, spontaneous reboots on our HPC clusters here. Now, given that with the exception of the Solaris systems Linux is under significantly more load than any of the other systems here, but Linux zealots seem to enjoy proporting an instability myth about Windows XP.
Microsoft has also added recovery options to Office XP, so if an Office XP application itself crashes, it will automatically try to restart itself with the same document in the same state as you were working on prior to the crash. I’ve only seen this feature twice as crashes of Office XP applications seem to be rare, and both times it worked flawlessly. If KPresenter crashes, you simply lose all changes you made since your last save.
Honestly, the only office application that is anywhere near up-to-par on the Linux side is OpenOffice.org’s word processor, and even it still has a host of problems. I’m yet to see it successfully open a Word template, and it has only been capable of opening about half of the Word documents I’ve tried.
Open source office applications simply do not compare to their Microsoft counterparts, and no amount of FUD about the stability of Windows will change that.
hehe
i can’t believe how many people on this site do not understand what sarcasm is
you people getting riled up over his comments need to get a life
it’s a joke
calm down
=p @ uptight nerds
anyways, i found it entertaining and comical, the true comedy bagan though when i noticed people actually thought you were serious
Ok, you got a point, depends on the skills/experience of the sysadm. Let me put this way then, if you have an experienced Windows sysadm in one side, and and equally experienced Linux sysadm in the other, probably the second dude has a calmer night sleep, not worried when the next Blaster/Nimda/Red Code worm will show up. When I did the “switch” from Windows to Linux I was a bit scared I wouldn’t have the skills to handle it, the command line can be a bit scary at first, but after a few weeks I was impressed how easy (and yet solid) maintaining Linux is. You set things up, once it’s up and running, you can pretty much “forget about it” (don’t take it literally, of course…)
Definitely not in my case. Comparitively I do much less “clean up” than my Microsoft counterparts down the hall. I’m paid on an hourly basis, my job is 8 – 5 M-F with the occasional beep for weekends when hardware fails, or there is a critical services patch needing applied to software that requires downtime that’s not possible on weekdays. My Microsoft associates down the hall put in more weekend and overtime hours than I do. Usually it’s because of some virus or new exploit patch that requires some kind of testing or whatnot before being applied to the 2k servers. I try not to inquire too closely about what they do, I like my weekends mostly free. If I were into it for the money and were single, I’d go for MS support, but I have a life and I want my weekends free. My pay is adequate and I put in few OT hours. Ask our CFO which he would prefer based on salary decisions and long term cost projections. Ask our CIO only about tech matters, don’t ask him about finances. The CFO was the one that pushed to have our industrial systems switched to Linux since the software commercially exists to do so. The CIO is still adamant about Microsoft for the office systems for reasons of his own. I’m just glad that weekly MS vulnerabilities can’t affect the industrial control systems any longer.
The last time I had to do weekend was to do a “full” Apache (we went from Apache 1 to Apache 2) update which couldn’t be done on the weekdays because of the amount of time and testing that needs to be done before placing it as “production”. I set the initial system up over a weekend and then fine tuned it over a 3 week period before making it “production”. That was about 3 months ago. Most of my weekday time is keeping up with security and stability issues, backup, and paperwork chores. More paperwork than computer work, usually. At home I have a Linux desktop and a FreeBSD/NetBSD test system. The kids have a Win2k system for games and that’s about all it’s used for.
” I administer a Computer system for a Non-profit with 30 windows computers – you can bet at least once a month someone somewhere is doing something to clobber their Windows system. In ten months I have had to deal with 8 severely messed up systems – 5 to the point that a reinstall was required. The reason is simple – a person using Windows must run in admin mode or some programs will not run right. He## even the Win2k Servers require constant looking after.”
Eh, and your complaining, having to reload 5 computers in 10 months. Geez, I’d say thats pretty good. Good chance people could F-up 5 linux boxes in that time to. I’m sure there are many people who would take your job if they only had to deal with one re-load every 2 months. Also considering if you were running computes in such a situation you would have ghost images of them doing the reload should be nothing.
Seriously, you shouldn’t complain if you have to actualy get up and do something every now and then instead of reading slashdot all day. If there were never an issue your job could very well get phased out. No one is going to take pitty on you just because you have to do something just because the world isn’t perfect. Sure you may have other things to do, but this is pretty weak argument against windows. If anything one could take it as a complement.
“First time i see someone say that Linux was based on Unix.
SCO must have sponsored the blurb… ”
Linux was based on unix.
Any clone is based on what it is cloning.
I dont mean the actuall code, but unix was the basis for linux. Or if you are SCO, I DO mean the actuall code.
Because the MS Office file formats are “CLOSED” and thrus making any kind of “compatibility” is a nightmare.
And don’t troll me with the MS Office documents be XML, because then i will ask… yes, but where are the specifications of the DTD’s and what in the hell means a zero in that attribute?
I’m not a zealot of anything. I just find myself in need to surrender to MS Office, but i would like indeed to have an alternative (and specially i would like to be able to use MS Office documents in non-Microsoft apps).
funny to see how many here fall for the slammer troll.
anyway, to stay somewhat on topic: I prefer FreeBSD in general. No other OS has such a polished distribution system like their ports.
These shills for MS conveniently forget that with MS you are not only paying the initial license fees, but also yearly “per seat” license fees for everyone in the business who is using the stuff. That includes the server OS and everyone who accesses it, the desktop OS on every desktop and every single MS app on every single desktop. Per seat licensing can cost thousands of dollars per year for even a small company. Do you think MS got to be the biggest gorilla in the world by letting people use their stuff for free?
Add this to the productivity costs of typical Windows and Windows apps downtime and you get a more objective analysis of TCO. And I haven’t even begun to dicuss the downtime, lost data and productivity, etc due to viruses, for which all MS products are magnets, becasue they are poorly designed, not simply because they are bigger targets.
Finally, a typical Linux/Unix sys admin can maintain at least twice as many desktops as the typical Windows sys admin. Contrary to what some people have said, maintaining an MS system requires a lot more time and fiddling than maintaining a Linux or Unix system. So even if you pay twice as much for a Linux/Unix sys admin, which you don’t, you’re still not paying any more than you would for the two or more Windows sys admins you’d need to take care of the same number of desktops. And this argument completely falls apart when you have diskless workstations on a Linux or Unix system, where all apps and data are maintained on the server. Can’t do that in the MS world, where everyone must have a desktop OS and local apps. So the cost of sys admins is a red herring.
There have already been many links posted to OSNews over the last few months of companies large and small that have successfully transitioned themselves from MS to Linux and saved themselves tens of thousands of dollars PER YEAR in doing so. Anyone arguing that MS is cheaper or no more ezpensive than Linux is either an idiot or just spreading MS FUD.
Hype would seem to entail that Linux was found and is now being embraced in excess of its capacities or worth just because it’s *the thing to do*…
Quite the contrary, when you look at its history….. it’s been in development for quite some time… and, despite any infusion from IBM, etc., it has made its way up the ranks on its own merit and value….
It’s open, freely available, and functional. It just works (as apple likes to say)…. If you can adapt it to your needs, doing so probably won’t endanger your business or organization.
so….how is that hype?
Right, I can see where losing millions of dollars to the latest innovative worm is much better. LOL
Linux on the other hand requires various commands to be typed to keep it running.
This is a patently false statement. I have a firewall/NAT gateway/web server/X terminal (yeah, I know it’s not the best combination) machine at home, and it’s been on for 82 days straight (a power failure was the last reason for a reboot). In that time I have not typed a single command, or used a single GUI interface to keep it running. I did run the Firewall GUI management tool (Firestarter) once or twice to forward some ports, but that’s it.
In other words, I do believe you are mistaken, as what you have said is completely untrue.
with Windows you have Windows Update and service packs, but I’ve had nothing but bad experience with those.
According to a recent Dvorak column, MS’s XP patches actually accelerate “XP decay”, the latest version of the Windows OS’s well-known tendency to decrease in performance over time…
I have to disagree with you on one point: You CAN have a diskless win2k station. My highschool (I’m a college freshman now) did this with a bunch of HP kiosks in the library. ‘Course, the network infrastructure has to cost a small (read “large”) fortune.
There simply isn’t a good open source alternative to PowerPoint.
If Open/StarOffice’s presentation program isn’t good enough (it may not have all of PP’s latest transition effects), then just run PowerPoint on Linux! It’s easy with Crossover Office…
I was trolled as well. Mmh. I’ll know better next time!
the per seat lisencing is easy to get around. Instead of getting a mass license you can just go and buy a full normal copy of XP pro, heck even home depending on what you are doing with it. If your a smaller company, say less then 50 computers, many more, this would probably make much more sense. You don’t have to dell with MS at all and can just sit on your copies and use them for as long as you please.
Classic!
Dont ever mix your views about home computing with corporate desktop. In corporates, data lost,security breach causes million of Dollars. Even if Windows is the best Desktop OS in the market IT firms cannot afford a failure. Bcos each failure is measured in terms of money. Companies are not blaming Microsoft bcos it is worlds most dominating s/w firm but these failure is costing them lot of money, simply which is not acceptable.
>>Windoze parent is based on DOS it was never designed to be network or a Server OS. <<
Of course, unix was not originally designed to be a desktop OS. Linux does not share unix’s code base, but linux was designed be unix like.
you fool.
and why is it the last 5 companies I provided consulting services for were highly interested in “imaging” systems and how to use them.
it’s because they have more work orders then there are grains of sand. sheesh. with so many workstations falling over, it’s somewhat cheaper to just ghost the system.
but noooo. let’s not mention information that flies in the face of your facts. “windows..just install it and it works”
for about 5 minutes.
you mullet head.
It was just recently I read a description of the art of the trolling but really had no idea what it was until today. I’d also never seen this kind of praise for a Troll attack either. Pretty funny
http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html
Take a deep breath folks because soon there will be awards for the best performance in trolling. I can’t wait to tell my kids that back in my day, trolling was done right and people worked darn hard at doing it.
From my own experience, longer term is cheaper. Learning GIMP saved me Photoshop and PSP. Learning Linux saved me Windows. Learning OpenOffice (StarOffice, actually) and KOffice saved me from Microsoft Office. This personally saved me money. It was hard in the beginning, but in the end it gave me way lot freedom and costed less money.
I’m wondering,
Microsoft Office -> OpenOffice
Internet Explorer -> Mozilla Firebird
Windows -> Linux distribution
How is that more expensive? The SHORT term is very misleading, because one has to learn opensource software, how it works (remember one had to learn MSDOS/Windows or whatever, too) and also because the licenses already got paid.
So start now thinking and drawing a plan and switching and you’ll save money in the end. Especially in the end of the world-wide recession! (: this is a tough time for MS…
Amsterdam is currently investigating if it’s possible to switch. There are opensource wireless projects in Amsterdam currently. UK gov is on researching it iirc, and Munich in Germany has switched already. OTOH, i haven’t heard of any report from the USA. The USA has teamed up with MS instead.
We’ll see who’s right in the future. After tossing the earlier stated fallacies out, i’m pretty sure who’s in the end saving money because of a more direct, transparent and honest system (:
(not counting the fact that MS gives out licenses for free to companies which use opensource, or cheap to students, and other certain people.)
Finally, MS ph33rs Linux, and opensource. Just like governments fear more free, progressive changed which they can’t control. It’s not what they want. MS has ph33red opensource for quite a time now, and the pro-europatents campaign from the US government didn’t work out (: for futher proof about this i refer to the Halloween documents.
http://www.compuserve.nl/portal/nieuws/artikel/default.asp?folder=a…
(Dutch)
Roughly said, they’ll investigate for 6 months alternatives like openoffice instead of ms office. Then they’ll decide to change, or not.
Windoze parent is based on DOS it was never designed to be network or a Server OS. It is pathetic as a Server OS. Windoze was designed to be a solo desktop single threaded OS like DOS.
The current version of Windows, which is XP was not based on DOS. Try an OS called VMS instead.
Security and bugs will always haunt windoze but we will not see that linux or Unix.
You sure about that ? Try reading up about exploits on *nix sometime.
Time for us to bury windoze and move forward.
Move forward to what ? Every OS out there is based on work done 30 years ago!
From experience windows admin involves, as someone else said, “Oh its not working. *hit reset*”.
Yes, I’ve seen this. Yes I’ve heard it. I couldn’t quite believe that any admin of any system would not go to the effort to try and rectify the problem but just accepted it was there and hit reboot. Freaky.
The predominance of that kind of attitude in Windows “admin” is probably why Linux admins get paid more. That and partially at least because it has been historically more difficult to grasp the admin of linux because its all conf file and CLI as opposed to nice warm-fuzzy-inducing GUIs (which I am in favour of).
From the article:
Mr Sargeant said that Linux on the desktop could prove compelling for workers doing little more than word processing but Windows would still be more cost effective for power users.
I know I use linux for graphics processing, web authoring, video editing, programming, listening to music, ripping and burnning cd’s, watching dvd’s, web browsing, 3d modeling…
So clearly linux is not only useful for word processing, well at least at home. He did say workers, but im sure some workers need to do some of those things I listed too. Also for powers users I would think GNOME’s and KDE’s UI features would make them more productive. Articles like this (if you did not already pick this up) kinda upset me…
my favorite part was “These jerks fail to understand that trolls are the best way to drive people off the internet thus making available multi-mbs for the rest of us to download our porn.”
Falling victim to open source. Yeah its free so their has to be something bad about it right. whatever these guys that warn this either work for apple or MS or are just scared of change. they like haveing a company like MS controll them and their software otherwise they would feel alone
“The current version of Windows, which is XP was not based on DOS. Try an OS called VMS instead.”
Nope! Cutter and his VMS team were hired by Microsoft to work on the NT kernel. It’s design was therefore somewhat similair to VMS. Are you talking crap? Yes.
Does XP still not have a useful CLI? IMO, it doesn’t.
Nope! Cutter and his VMS team were hired by Microsoft to work on the NT kernel. It’s design was therefore somewhat similair to VMS. Are you talking crap? Yes.
Read up on the two operating systems. They were similiar enough that Digital sued.
Everyone on this site talks crap. Thats all this place is. Its one big circus of shit talkers.
Corporate Windows users seldom mention how much money they lose each time their computers get infected with a virus. Is it because they see it as part of the normal usage of a computer ? Are they afraid their insurance company will find out about it and increase their premiums ? Are they simply ashamed of admitting that they regularly get caught with their pants down ? Anyhow, they always sound as if their Windows networks were the most secure of all.
I think we all understand trolling (which is what Slammer’s post was) and sarcasm (which is what Slammer’s post was not). The problem is when I am cicumambulating the office and hear remarks like, “You shouldn’t do that! I heard that running Windows update is bad!”
The problem with trolls is that if those who know they are trolls don’t say something, those who don’t know they are trolls believe them. Hence the response is necessary; unfortunately.
My installation of Windows 3.1 was rock solid … but that isn’t an OS so I doubt it counts
Windows 3.1 wasn’t very stable in my experience, but DOS was pretty good. However, you still had to manage your memory and other resources in your autoexec.bat and config.sys files. That was a pain.
What i dislike about Windows isn’t the crashing
No! You dislike the crashing. I think you are mistaken about the rest. Now repeat, “I dislike the crashing” until you believe it.
(I have had Linux crash many times on me)
I have too, but in every case, it was either bad hardware or an insufficient power supply (which is especially the case with dual CPU machines).
but it’s the viruses that take advantage of security holes.
Okay, that does suck more than crashing. I succumb to your astute reasoning.
My problems with crashing on Linux wasn’t Linux’s fault(the kernel is rock solid), it’s normally software that just locks up X solid. Pray I can get to another console to kill X and start agian
Or, you can SSH in from another box and kill the process.
“They were similiar enough that Digital sued.”
Fallacy. That doesn’t proof anything.
An OpenVMS box is a lot more secure then NT, for intance.
> Does XP still not have a useful CLI? IMO, it doesn’t.
It’s better than Win2K, but still not as good as Bash etc.
You could always install Cygwin.