The Microsoft way
- Windows 2003 Server, Enterprise Edition: $3,999
- Visual Studio.NET, Enterprise Edition: $2,499 per developer
- SQL Server, Enterprise Edition: $19,999 per processor
- Programming in an outdated, insecure, hard to use environment: priceless.
The Linux way
- Debian Linux: free
- Apache 2.0: free
- PostgreSQL: free
- Perl/PHP/Python: free
- Programing in a fun, modern, secure environment: priceless.
Comments:
You forgot:
>>> ASP.NET: free
Heheh.
You actually _can_ code .Net w/ a free SDK (which includes compiler), but I don't know anyone that does.
The minds are in a different place on that side of the world.
Do that for the desktop OS and all the little programs you need like
OpenOffice vs MS Office
IE vs Firefox
AutoCAD vs Qcad or SagCAD
Paintshop vs GIMP
Outlook vs Evolution
Couple more years and Linux maybe via Ubuntu will beat Windows
I remain quite skeptical of Aunt Tillie using desktop linux.
I'm quite glad to have it, but I'm not a representative user.
Just this weekend, my wife was complaining to me that too many sites still don't work under Firefox. (They are generally using IE-specific JS.)
Of course, she expressed this as the Mac being a pain in the ass, though she rationally knows it's the sites' fault.
Perception is as important as reality. I think Windows will be displaced as de facto 20 years after school labs are populated with Linux.
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