Re: xxd -i vs DIY Was: C23 thoughts and opinions

On 30/05/2024 14:15, Michael S wrote:

On Thu, 30 May 2024 13:31:18 +0200
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
 

On 30/05/2024 02:18, bart wrote:

On 29/05/2024 22:46, Malcolm McLean wrote:

>

Exactly. Windows costs a fortune.

>
Actually I've no idea how much it costs.

>
The retail version is too much for a cheap machine, but a minor part
of the cost of a more serious computer.  The server versions and
things like MSSQL server are ridiculous prices - for many setups,
they cost more than the hardware, and that's before you consider the
client access licenses.
>

 It depends.
If you need Windows server just to run your own applications or
certain 3rd-party applications without being file server and without
being terminal server (i.e. at most 2 interactive users logged on
simultaneously) then you can get away with Windows Server Essential.
It costs less than typical low end server hardware.

Yes - Windows Server Essential was a good choice, and a lot more price-efficient for small usage.  You also don't need CALs, saving a lot of cost and a huge amount of effort and bureaucracy.  That's why MS stopped selling it retail after server 2019 - it was too popular.
The last Windows server I set up was for a third-party application that required Windows Server 2022 (not 2019) and MSSQL server.  I have no idea why - the task could have been written to run on a Raspberry Pi with extra storage.
To give Windows server it's fair due, you get a nice 180 days evaluation period and installation was quite straightforward on a VM on a Proxmox mini PC.  But towards the end of that trial period we will have to decide if we want to pay the full server licence cost, or buy a monster rack server from someone like Dell or HP that can sell the Essentials version.  (Dell and HP make reasonable enough systems, but I'd rather use 5% of the processing capacity of a little mini PC than 2% capacity of a rack monster that sounds like a jet engine.)
Ultimately, the cost of even the standard version of Windows server is a small part of the cost of this rather specialised third-party software, and the whole thing will (if it works like we hope) save our company a good deal more than it costs.  So we'll pay the Windows server license. It is simply annoying that we have to pay a high price for the full server licence, when we are doing so little with it.

MS-SQL also has many editions with very different pricing.

Last I looked, they have the free version that covers a lot of basic usage (and I think that's what we are using at the moment), an expensive standard version with absurdly complicated CALs, and then /really/ expensive versions beyond that.

I think, nowadays even Oracle has editions that is not ridiculously
expensive. Not sure about IBM DB2.

They have to, to stay relevant for new users.  The main reason anyone ever chooses to buy MS SQL, DB2 or Oracle is because they have always bought those servers and are locked into them due to proprietary extensions, additional software (their own or third-party), training and familiarity, and support contracts.  For new systems that don't have the legacy requirements, customers will wonder why they should buy one of these when something like PostgreSQL is free, has most of the features (including its own unique ones), and will happily scale to the huge majority of database needs.  Sure, it does not have the management tools of the big commercial database servers, but you can get a lot of commercial support for the money you save on licensing.

 

>
But whatever it is, I'm not adverse to the idea of having to pay
for software. After all you have to pay for hardware, and for
computers, I would happily pay extra to have something that works
out of the box.

>
I have nothing against paying for software either.  I mainly use
Linux because it is better, not because it is free - that's just an
added convenience.  I have bought a number of Windows retail licenses
over the decades, to use with machines I put together myself rather
than OEM installations.
>
I'm not so sure about "works out of the box", however.  On most
systems with so-called "pre-installed" Windows, it takes hours for
the installation to complete, and you need to answer questions or
click things along the way so you can't just leave it to itself.  And
if the manufacturer has taken sponsorship from ad-ware and crap-ware
vendors, it takes more hours to install, and then you have hours of
work to uninstall the junk.
>

 I don't remember anything like that in case of cheap mini-PC from my
previous post. It took a little longer than for previous mini-PC with
Win10 that it replaced, and longer than desktop with Win7, but we are
still talking about 10-15 minutes, not hours.

This can vary significantly from manufacturer to manufacturer.  And perhaps it is not as bad as it used to be - most systems I have set up in recent years have been bare-bones.

May be, quick Internet connection helps (but I heard that in Norway it
is quicker).

There's no issue there.  It's the unpacking of overweight programs from one "hidden" part of the disk and installation in the main partition, along with the endless reboots, that takes time.  And every so often the whole process stops to ask you a question.

Or, may be, people that sold me a box, did some preliminary work.

That is certainly a service IT suppliers can offer.

Or, may be, your case of installation was very unusual.

Or maybe yours was unusual :-)
Or maybe I have been less lucky in the manufacturers, or the type of machine.  Or, as I suggested above, maybe it's more a thing of the past and not so relevant now.

 On the other hand, I routinely see IT personal at work spending several
hours installing non-OEM Windows, esp. on laptops and servers. On
desktops it tends to be less bad.
 

It's all a matter of the hardware, and what is supported out of the box and what needs external drivers.  Windows is definitely improving in that area, but has a very long way to go to reach the convenience of Linux.  (But if your favourite Linux distribution doesn't have a driver for the hardware in question, you generally have a lot more effort than you do compared to Windows missing the the driver.  I've yet to meet the perfect OS.)
But I think one of the most "entertaining" cases I had was installing Windows Server on a Dell server some years back.  The Dell machine had only USB 3 slots, while Windows Server did not have native support for anything beyond USB 2.  So you could get through the first part of the installation fine, as the installer uses the BIOS for keyboard, mouse and USB disk services.  Then it switches to its own drivers and has no access to the keyboard, mouse, or USB drives.  (Dell had a solution, of course, but it was a fair bit of extra fuss.)