Topic: .NET vs. Linux (Company solution) (Page 1 of 1)

I'm a part of a small company and I have a decision to make. We need to expand our capability and provide web services further than just website design and development. The president of the company (in this case my dad) proposed we start learning .NET. He did look into OSS apposed to .NET and found that .NET is more cost effective over a period of time even though it costs close to $2500 to renew it for next year.

I'm not really thrilled about learning .NET and have more interest in Linux. I've touched the turf of Linux and know most of it is command line, mainly for a server. I know I could have a higher pay and essentially a better future with .NET. If I'm not interested in something, I'm likely not going to learn it very well. I'll have to learn it for the next few years. I haven't even touched .NET's turf yet.

Which way should we go? (.NET or Linux)

If you know of any useful articles, let me know. If you think .NET is the best solution, maybe I need some sort of motivation, motivate me to learn it. If you had experiences that will help, please share it!

My current skills may effect how I learn things so just for your information:
OS Skills: Windows XP
Application Skills: Photoshop 7, Flash 5, Microsoft Office
Language Skills: XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and a little SSH and ActionScript (Flash 5)
I code my XHTML and CSS as close to standard as I can. I've played with Linux a little, not enough to know my way around it.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

I've been working with UNIX since 1983 and MircoSoft operating systems since 1984. I avoid MicroSoft when I can because any solution you create on a MicroSoft machine will only work on the MicroSoft machine. Solutions developed under UNIX can be ported more easily to other operating systems and architectures.

Any solution developed on a Windows machine becomes a moving target because within three years MicroSoft wants you to replace your existing operating system with their newest whiz-bang operating system and of course that means upgrading your application software so that it can "take fullest advantage" of the newest features in the operating system.

The web world tends to be divided between MircoSoft and Linux (there are a few people running servers on Macs and other OSs, but the number is so small that we can efectively ignore them for this discussion). Of the two, MicroSoft and Linux, you will find that Linux is a far more stable operating system. You will have fewer crashes and fewer security problems running a server on Linux than on any of the MicroSoft operating systems.

If I were making the choice, I would pick Linux for stability, security, and inter-operability.



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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

You don't say where you want to expand to. If you are planning on running some servers I would say go with a linux or BSD solution (I prefer FreeBSD). If you are going to be doing application programming go with windows.

Dan @ Code Town

(Edited by WarMage on 11-30-2004 14:12)

quote:

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Any solution developed on a Windows machine becomes a moving target because within three years MicroSoft wants you to replace your existing operating system with their newest whiz-bang operating system and of course that means upgrading your application software so that it can "take fullest advantage" of the newest features in the operating system.

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Well, that's a tad bit unfair. I've windows applications where I've been running the same binary since '95.
I would not expect that from any linux app without recompiling to take into account the current glibc.

I'm a little confused with what you're asking here Zavaboy. Linux is an operating system while .NET is a set of tools. Am I correct in assuming that by Linux you mean open source solutions such as PHP, Perl, etc.?

If this is the case, most open source solutions are available for both Windows & Linux.

WarMage: We are planning on doing application programming and may get into servers later down the road.

Jestah: Yes, we are also looking at open source solutions, but how efficient is it compared to Microsoft's .NET Suite? (Long and short term costs, labor costs, learning, troubleshooting, flexibility, stability, security, portability, etc...)

Now if we are talking open source tools we are speaking about a completely different thing.

I think some definitions are needed to what you want to do.

1) If you want to develop serverside applications or you want to have a server far going open source from the start is a must. With open source you arrive with hundreds of options that don't cost a dime.

2) If you are going to be doing applications programming you can do it all without the cost associated with .NET. Why pay for .NET when you can use Java as opposed to C# or PHP as opposed to ASP.NET. Open source tools are just better. I would choose the Eclipse IDE over visual studio any day of the week.

For any business that isn't already locked into MS or for a small company with very little invested in MS an immediate switch to an open source solutions should be contemplated. You will be saving thousands of dollars per user with the switch in licensing costs, and you will save because the developers will have access to better tools to get their job done.

At work I still run a Windows OS but all of the tools I use are open source tools, and the company has saved thousands in licesing fees.

Eclipse over Visual Studio $2k
Blender over Max $500
Gimp over Photoshop $500 (this is bad, they should have gotten me PS)
OpenOffice over MS Officce $1K
Apache/PHP/MySQL over IIS/SQL Server $2k

Thats 6K and is not all inclusive

The cost just keep adding up, and that is just for me as the single user, if you talk about 5 or 6 developers you are talking almost enough savings to hire an additional QA!

Dan @ Code Town

For application development there is even an other way to go. It's called Mono and it's based on the .NET framework. Mono is the open source answer to .NET envirronments.
See:
http://www.mono-project.com/about/index.html --->mono project page
http://www.gotmono.net/gotmono/docs.html ---> mono documentation

This might be just the thing you need.

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Support Justice for Pat Richard

I've had to do some .NET stuff in school. I gotta admit that the GUI form designer is nice, and the IDE has some nice feautres but overall I much prefer working with open source tools. MONO looks very intersting. I'll have to look into it.

Would open source solutions like Mono work nicely with the actual .NET framework, or would they deny each others existence and not work. Say we have a customer with .NET, could we work with them with no problems (Mono and .NET can talk, understand each other and be good friends), or would problems occur between Mono and .NET (Mono and .NET don't know what's going on and they don't understand each other)?

Also, does Mono have the same learning curve as .NET? Can you develop something faster in one over the other? Does one have better support over the other? I would assume .NET has better support which will allow me to get projects done faster.

have you actually read anything about Mono? It's a .NET implementation for unix - ergo except for the form parts, it's going to be rather close to .NET itself.

I just took a glance at that site until now. Looks like a nice option.

Have you actually tried Microsoft's support at anytime? Based on my experiences I would say that Mono must have better support.

On a side note when someone mentions support what do they mean? It seems like a nice big buzz word that gets passed around now. Does it mean you want someone on the other end of a phone 24 hours a day or does it mean that you want to have good documentation available? Or does it mean something that doesn't quite fit in either of the categories that I have mentioned.

Dan @ Code Town

I'm not really talking about Microsoft's support alone, what about user groups that I can attend in/around my area?

That is something that you would have to look into on a product by product basis. I think it also depends upon how geeky and large the place where you live is.

Dan @ Code Town

Hi, there.

Another flamewar on the way?

Even if you're ... got it?

~Enters the room with a realy massive Flamethrower in his hands~
Did i hear the word flamewar???
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.....
...
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!
~Whooosh~

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Support Justice for Pat Richard

*sigh*
Flamewar? ... Uh oh...
Um, no flamewar...

I actually agree with WarMage.

Next question: Would people buy more from us if we have open source tools opposed to Microsoft's tools with me certified?

Our company needs to make profit, right now we have a higher loss than profit. Of what I've read, .NET would bring in more profit. If you don't agree with me and think open source tools would bring in more profit than .NET, please explain.

profit has relativly little to do with the tools you use, provided you charge more than you spent.
And the only way to reduce what you spend nowadays is generally to know your tools bloody well, and having already build 3 similar systems.

So no matter which way I go, the results depend on how much I know the tools I use? I mean I use and know PHP pretty well and a some shell commands, does this mean I'll have a better chance on the open source side of things? I haven't even touched any ASP, Java or C# and only had a taste of C++.