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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: xxd -i vs DIY Was: C23 thoughts and opinions
Date: Thu, 30 May 2024 16:09:00 +0200
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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.)