Information Week Survey on Windows vs. Linux

According to this Information Week Story, Linux is doing better than many expected, and Microsoft is blamed and chastised for not being Linux-friendly by those surveyed. A lot better than Open Source having to compete with Microsoft on closed proprietary standards...

Interesting statistics in the surveys, but especially when looked at side-by-side.

Microsoft's main advantages are integration with their own software, and availability of software. The critical mass on software availability has already been achieved, and Linux will only get better in this area.

Linux's main advantages includes cost and reliability. This seems to indicate that despite the ``education'' on what TCO really is, people are convinced that Linux is still better value.

Reliability is a reason for 50% of users to use Linux, yet only 25% feel reliability is a reason to use Windows. To a lesser degree, just over 40% consider Linux's security to be a good reason to use it, while only 10% are confident in Windows' security.

That translates into the worries around Windows as a platform - just under 80% of those surveyed were worried about Windows quality and vulnerabilities. A good 23% (or so) are worried about Linux - and in the big bad Internet out there, one can't blame them. This will be an interesting area to watch in future.

Linux's worries graph looks quite daunting, with three bold lines covering integrated software, accountability, and product roadmap. Luckily, these lines are in the 35-40% area - Microsoft's top three worries are above 50%.

Additionally, the accountability argument doesn't seem to be fooling many - while 37% are worried about accountability on Linux as a platform, about 32% are worried about accountability on Windows as a platform.

Two more interesting worries, one of which is the Microsoft monopoly. This ties in nicely with the fact only about 20% were confident in Microsoft's business model, and about 20% were confident that Microsoft would be innovative in future, whereas those figures were closer to 40% for Linux.

It seems SCO and Eolas are getting into the ambient psyche of IT professionals - roughly 25% worry about potential intellectual property (one assumes patent and copyright) problems with Linux, against 15% regarding Windows.

Finally, showing there's a lot of confidence in Linux, a whopping 27% of those surveyed felt that they weren't worried about Linux as a platform, whereas only 8% could say the same about Windows.