[brudgers]

Because OS and application support scales in ways that reduce marginal costs, claims that desktop rollouts of Linux ultimately entail a substantial financial benefit are dubious. The pool of Linux expertise is smaller and thus basic support tends to be more expensive than an OEM version of Windows. For example, Ubuntu or Redhat support starts a $70-$100 per user per year versus $150 or so for OEM Windows.

[RobAley]

Bear in mind that most large scale public organisations primarily rely on either internal IT staff or external contractors (as opposed to the OS/application vendor) for user-facing support for both Windows and Linux. The scale & cost of that support is pretty much OS independent. Minimal training is required for front-line support of Linux for someone with experience of Windows support, something akin to the training required for a new version of Windows.

Central provisioning, deployment and higher level support costs are centralised and do not scale as fast as user facing support. These areas are typically contracted out to (or supported by) the OS/app vendors, and such cost is a smaller part of the deployment/maintenance costs.

Large enterprises perhaps do not work in this manor and have often have direct per-seat support from vendors, but public organisation are generally organised as I outline above (at least over here in Europe).

[zby]

Hmm - I don't parse that - how $70-$100 is more then $150? Or did I misinterpret something?

[brudgers]

https://www.redhat.com/apps/store/desktop/

http://www.ubuntu.com/business/desktop#services

On the other hand, Windows comes with pretty good self support for the end user out of the box via multiple professionally developed and maintained channels.