Hatin' the Haters - Dealing with a lack of reason.

RobertKaucher

I just wan to say that I hate it when people complain about MS products and actively state that things will not work for what we want to do with it and when pressed to explain the details of what requirements it will not meet can only come up with "Well, I just distrust anything that comes out of Microsoft." I'm not married to Bill. I'm no fan boy and technology is not a religion to me. But it clearly is to some people.

If you don't have to manage it, only have to use it, and it does in fact perform the requirements asked of it why go around to other people in the company and try to poison the well?

ally_uk

I use numerous different operating systems, hate the fanboy aspect of where people say A certain Operating System sucks, I like Windows, And I like linux, I embrace both and keep a open mind, I started with Windows 3.1 back in the day and my NIX journey began 2002, Ive met a few colourful characters who consider Linux to be superior and Microsoft to be utter s**t in comparison, there is no reasoning with these people, And to be frank I tire of listening to them, they way I see it each have there own merits and benefits and I Figured if I embrace both and learn to actually work and understand the technology behind both then I would be at a advantage.

I have also found that a few of the hardened Linux vets, i.e started with Unix slate Microsoft to hell, but actually havent sat down and worked with any Microsoft Server product. which doesn't make any sense? why slate it if you havent used it?

alan2308

It's the same mentality that leads people to put stickers with Calvin peeing on a Ford logo in their back window. Or that leads my wife to feel the need to share her opinion of mustard every time I make a sandwich.

ally_uk

Why do Linux Users hate Microsoft so much though? Why is Microsoft considered S**t? ive used alot of there products Ok I thought ME and Vista were pretty sucky lol but the rest have been pretty damm good and have fufilled my computing needs.

Linux is great but if you are new to it then it can be pretty damm intimidating to get to grips with. I could imagine it being absolute hell if a new user was put in front of a Linux box and had to configure a Driver.

phantasm

ally_uk wrote: »

I use numerous different operating systems, hate the fanboy aspect of where people say A certain Operating System sucks, I like Windows, And I like linux, I embrace both and keep a open mind, I started with Windows 3.1 back in the day and my NIX journey began 2002, Ive met a few colourful characters who consider Linux to be superior and Microsoft to be utter s**t in comparison, there is no reasoning with these people, And to be frank I tire of listening to them, they way I see it each have there own merits and benefits and I Figured if I embrace both and learn to actually work and understand the technology behind both then I would be at a advantage.

I have also found that a few of the hardened Linux vets, i.e started with Unix slate Microsoft to hell, but actually havent sat down and worked with any Microsoft Server product. which doesn't make any sense? why slate it if you havent used it?

I started with MS-DOS and Linux in 1999. I don't get the fanboy attitude though. Each OS has their respective strong point and should be used for it.

RobertKaucher

What bothers me is that there was some obvious attempt at convincing others in the org that the product in question is inferior and will not be able to fill the company's requirements which is clearly false to those of us who actually know the product.

westward

Microsoft spent years creating a crappy product that built up an opinion that was fully warranted. Period!

Daniel333

ally_uk wrote: »

Why do Linux Users hate Microsoft so much though? Why is Microsoft considered S**t? ive used alot of there products Ok I thought ME and Vista were pretty sucky lol but the rest have been pretty damm good and have fufilled my computing needs.

Linux is great but if you are new to it then it can be pretty damm intimidating to get to grips with. I could imagine it being absolute hell if a new user was put in front of a Linux box and had to configure a Driver.

But if you want to really see the source of it all you need to understand where the online culture started. And I am not taking facebook...

This really goes back pretty far.I would highly recommend the following two movies to get some history on it

History of hacking, this will give you an understanding of the culture of the technology prior to the turn of the century -
Discovery_Channel_-_The_History_Of_Hacking_Documentary.avi

From there you need to see why Linux was a counter revolution -
Netflix - Unlimited TV Shows & Movies Online

Then ask yourself what motivates people in general to think or believe anything? Then you can start to identify which personality type you are dealing with at a given moment.

Forsaken_GA

ally_uk wrote: »

I have also found that a few of the hardened Linux vets, i.e started with Unix slate Microsoft to hell, but actually havent sat down and worked with any Microsoft Server product. which doesn't make any sense? why slate it if you havent used it?

In my case, I started out with Microsoft products. Early on, I tried to get away from them, and ended up being a big OS/2 user.

Unfortunately, OS/2 didn't take off nearly as well as it should have, and at that time, Unix was nowhere near as user friendly as it is today (those of you that remember creating your X configuration by hand, and having to be careful of your settings so you didn't blow up your monitor will understand what I'm talking about), so I ended up going back to Microsoft for awhile. The products had serious flaws. You can't even talk about Microsoft and security in the same sentence until you get to Windows 2000. If you read through the history of Win2k's service packs, the sheer amounts of remote exploit holes is absolutely staggering. Unix ran some services very well, and it was rock solid, but it had a serious lack of depth and commercial support, except for a few products here and there (Solaris, Oracle, etc). If you wanted to run unix servers, you basically had to know more than you ever wanted about programming, at least enough to compile your own software, because package management had a long ways to go at that time.

So despite all of it's problems, Microsoft had the convenience factor going for it, especially after it ripped off Novell for Active Directory.

At some point, and I believe it's mostly when IBM threw their weight behind Linux, that all started changing. Commercial distributions became more frequent, the support was much improved, and the open source movement was putting out some seriously good quality software. While that was going on, unix-like environments were undergoing refinement to make them alot more friendly to use and administer (this all relatively speaking, of course. Your 80 year old grandma would not find unix user friendly even today, but a server admin sure would). Windows API's got reverse engineered to improve interoperability between Unix and Windows, and a viable alternative to windows in the enterprise emerged. Besides all of that, the software was mostly free, and you didn't have to involve yourself in the quagmire of Windows licensing.

Now, I'm sure the quality of Windows products are much improved. I wouldn't know first hand, I've worked very hard to get away from anything that even reeks of Windows administration. I've had too many headaches with Microsoft solutions in the past, and I just find their products to be frustrating to work with. Unix makes sense to me.

From an outsiders perspective, I still see far too many problems. Take Sharepoint for example. We're forced to make use of it to degree, but there are constant problems with it. Our windows admins absolutely HATE dealing with Sharepoint. Some departments of the company got away from Sharepoint and started using Confluence and Jira as collaboration tools. I don't think it's accidental that those teams end up being the more productive ones. In general, I just find Microsoft products to be inflexible, and your options tend to be somewhat limited. We need to be able to modify software to fit our needs, and that means we need source code.

With that all being said - some Microsoft products do fill a need. As much as I hate to admit it, Exchange is probably the best groupware system around. There are open source products that can fill the need, but they're not as full featured, or their support just isn't up to par.

I'm a big believer in using the right tool for the job, and sometimes, a Microsoft product is the right tool. But I will admit to a certain bias to find tools that aren't Microsoft to fill the role.

RobertKaucher

bertieb

Don't forget, some people will push an opinion to the execs even if those opinions are factually incorrect, completely wide of the mark or even just on the spot made up lies if they think it would benefit themselves. Sadly, I know of many who have done this with mixed results. Don't you just love office politics?

Just continue to be the true professional that you are, Robert, even if it means having to continually explain the facts and putting inaccuracies straight.

Claymoore

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

I'm a big believer in using the right tool for the job, and sometimes, a Microsoft product is the right tool. But I will admit to a certain bias to find tools that aren't Microsoft to fill the role.

Disclaimer - I work for a Microsoft partner, so it's in my financial best interest to steer you towards a Microsoft solution. I also believe in their products, which is why I work for a partner and spend so much time studying the latest versions.

Even so, there are times when I would rather use something else to accomplish a task. Before Exchange had a viable edge product, I would use a *nix appliance as a smart host for edge filtering. I still have never deployed an Edge Transport server because all of my clients already had an appliance or a service in place. I would rather use a hardware load balancer than set up an NLB cluster - not because I can't set up an NLB cluster, but because I like the flexibility of a separate appliance. If you limit yourself to one technology you will miss out on some really cool solutions.

Everyone

Claymoore wrote: »

Disclaimer - I work for a Microsoft partner, so it's in my financial best interest to steer you towards a Microsoft solution. I also believe in their products, which is why I work for a partner and spend so much time studying the latest versions.

Even so, there are times when I would rather use something else to accomplish a task. Before Exchange had a viable edge product, I would use a *nix appliance as a smart host for edge filtering. I still have never deployed an Edge Transport server because all of my clients already had an appliance or a service in place. I would rather use a hardware load balancer than set up an NLB cluster - not because I can't set up an NLB cluster, but because I like the flexibility of a separate appliance. If you limit yourself to one technology you will miss out on some really cool solutions.

I still prefer a 3rd party solution to an Edge Transport server. I messed with the Edge Transport/Forefront combo, and hated it. There are some great options for this that run on a Windows server too. Even Microsoft recommends a hardware load balancer over NLB, in fact you HAVE to use on in certain configurations. For example I have a 2 node Exchange 2010 DAG, Hub Transport/CAS/Mailbox roles combined on both servers. You have to use a hardware load balancer for this configuration to work.

Linux and Windows both have their place, and I'll always go with whichever can handle the task the best. IMO if you're going to use Linux in and enterprise class environment, it better be something like Red Hat with support from the vendor. I am not a fan of using OpenSource solutions that are only community supported in an Enterprise environment, at least not for anything that is considered mission critical.

RobertKaucher

Claymoore wrote: »

Disclaimer - I work for a Microsoft partner, so it's in my financial best interest to steer you towards a Microsoft solution. I also believe in their products, which is why I work for a partner and spend so much time studying the latest versions.

Even so, there are times when I would rather use something else to accomplish a task. Before Exchange had a viable edge product, I would use a *nix appliance as a smart host for edge filtering. I still have never deployed an Edge Transport server because all of my clients already had an appliance or a service in place. I would rather use a hardware load balancer than set up an NLB cluster - not because I can't set up an NLB cluster, but because I like the flexibility of a separate appliance. If you limit yourself to one technology you will miss out on some really cool solutions.

This is what annoys me the most. I am no MS fan boy. If I don't think the MS technology will do what is needed I am open to other things. This is why I learn Linux and have an understanding of things like Perl and PHP. But if certain things are rejected 100% simply because of what amounts to a religious faith (in this case the religion of hating MS) then the company's needs are not being served.

instant000

There is no dilemma to me. I have an allegiance to the customer, who pays me $$$.

Whichever technology works best, that is what I will recommend. If the customer is cost-conscious, then I will remind them of what the "best" option is, and what specific features they'll be lacking by going with another product/version. If they are fine with that, then it is their decision. I did my part, by informing them of the pros/cons and allowing them to decide based upon that.

My job is to provide the best, honest advice that I can. That is what the customer hires you for.

If the customer wanted to be misled, they could easily make their purchasing decisions based upon advertisements.

Hope this helps.

Pash

RobertKaucher wrote: »

This is what annoys me the most. I am no MS fan boy. If I don't think the MS technology will do what is needed I am open to other things. This is why I learn Linux and have an understanding of things like Perl and PHP. But if certain things are rejected 100% simply because of what amounts to a religious faith (in this case the religion of hating MS) then the company's needs are not being served.

I really do honestly believe that people who limit themselves to fanboy behaviour do not understand real world IT in public or private sector. All of us who may be in senior positions or have project managed a project from inception/order/design/delivery know that budget and available options are also key factors in deciding what to use. Am I going to use postfix when I have budget for putting in Exchange? No chance.

I am always looking at what a product offers for the given situation and then ill use whatever wins with the given conditions. Why do I use a fedora linux server for my web server at home? Because its free and I cannot afford a license to run redhat or Windows 2008.

Everyone

instant000 wrote: »

There is no dilemma to me. I have an allegiance to the customer, who pays me $$$.

Whichever technology works best, that is what I will recommend. If the customer is cost-conscious, then I will remind them of what the "best" option is, and what specific features they'll be lacking by going with another product/version. If they are fine with that, then it is their decision. I did my part, by informing them of the pros/cons and allowing them to decide based upon that.

My job is to provide the best, honest advice that I can. That is what the customer hires you for.

If the customer wanted to be misled, they could easily make their purchasing decisions based upon advertisements.

Hope this helps.

It sounds like you're in the consulting world, which is a little different. I think the OP sounds like he's full time/permanent IT stuff for a company, and a coworker is undermining his expertise to management.

I had a similar thing happen. Our PC Tech supervisor was convinced we should switch from Exchange and Office to Zimbra and OpenOffice. I'm the one responsible for all of our messaging systems. She's worked here far longer than I have, but only knows desktop support stuff, she has no clue about servers and how things run on the back end. I got asked to help her look into it by our management. I told them there was no need to because it would not work for the business. They shot back with "Well Microsoft is getting too expensive, we want to get rid of our EA so we can save some money." I told them it wouldn't work for us, and while the software is free, there are other costs associated with making a switch like that, that would end up costing us more. I ended up having to write a paper on why it was a bad idea, while the person who suggested it tried to do their own testing to prove otherwise. Took me a few minutes to do, while she wasted weeks of time to come to the same conclusion.

Forsaken_GA

RobertKaucher wrote: »

This is what annoys me the most. I am no MS fan boy. If I don't think the MS technology will do what is needed I am open to other things. This is why I learn Linux and have an understanding of things like Perl and PHP. But if certain things are rejected 100% simply because of what amounts to a religious faith (in this case the religion of hating MS) then the company's needs are not being served.

Robert, while I agree with you on the principle that if you're going to hate something, you should have a good reason to do so, but a former boss of mine had a favorite saying - perception is reality. Just take a look at the Vista fiasco to see the truth in that.

With all of the attacks and exploits aimed at Microsoft products, it's hard for anyone with any amount of intelligence to not be just a tad wary about deploying them.

Or then you run into folks with my perception, which is that Microsoft products are bloated, buggy, and inflexible, which is based on my past experience (and I'll take the pepsi challenge on linux vs. windows on resource usage any day of the week). That gets pretty hard to overcome.

Pash

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Or then you run into folks with my perception, which is that Microsoft products are bloated, buggy, and inflexible, which is based on my past experience (and I'll take the pepsi challenge on linux vs. windows on resource usage any day of the week). That gets pretty hard to overcome.

This is a very honest point of view. I think these boards have missed points like this recently!

I still think Microsoft have some ace products and I am yet to see equivalents to Exchange/Sharepoint. But yes, running fedora (run level 3),apache/php/mysql on my tiny little fanless pc with 512mb RAM in it is rather endearing!

Forsaken_GA

Pash wrote: »

This is a very honest point of view. I think these boards have missed points like this recently!

I still think Microsoft have some ace products and I am yet to see equivalents to Exchange/Sharepoint. But yes, running fedora (run level 3),apache/php/mysql on my tiny little fanless pc with 512mb RAM in it is rather endearing!

Yeah, like I said before, I'm willing to concede that sometimes Microsoft has good solutions (I don't think Sharepoint is one of them!). I actually don't have much of a problem with Exchange, as long as there's a good admin behind it. I think most of my hate for Exchange comes from the fact that I'm forced to use Outlook as it's frontend, and Outlook is not exactly my most favorite client in the world. I used to be a fan of Microsoft solutions when it came to streaming media solutions as well, but advances in the open source world have made me reconsider that point of view.

Everyone

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

I used to be a fan of Microsoft solutions when it came to streaming media solutions as well, but advances in the open source world have made me reconsider that point of view.

I've been playing with an OpenSource internal "You Tube" clone as a process improvement/low cost alternative to our current Microsoft based streaming media system. Mostly I'm trying to get it to where users can do this crap on their own through a simple and familiar web interface. It annoys me that our AV department creates videos for other departments, then a ticket is opened up with our Help Desk and forwarded back to my department to copy and publish the video to the streaming media server, then send the link to 8 different people so it can be published on our intranet website.

Its just been a side project though, I've been too busy with other projects to do much with it. I have it somewhat functional, just never got around to getting it to integrate with our AD for single sign on purposes.

Forsaken_GA

Everyone wrote: »

I've been playing with an OpenSource internal "You Tube" clone as a process improvement/low cost alternative to our current Microsoft based streaming media system. Mostly I'm trying to get it to where users can do this crap on their own through a simple and familiar web interface.

Yup. At a previous job, we used to recommend either Adobe Flash Media Server on a windows install, FMS on a RedHat install, or the windows media service, can't freaking remember what it was called anymore.

That all changed when lighttpd and apache modules came about for video streaming, and then Wowza Media Server became a damn good product for things like flash apps, so the market got more options, and in more than a few cases, our customers started opting for non microsoft solutions.

Forsaken_GA

Thinking on it more, I guess the best way to sum up my viewpoint is that I don't like Microsoft, but I don't let my likes and dislikes get in the way of doing my job to the best of my ability.

Microsoft enjoyed market dominance for a good long time, and in a few cases, it was because it was the only game in town. These days, there are plenty of viable options to Microsoft solutions, so it's no longer automatic. Microsoft has to fight and earn their place in the marketplace like every other company. And like every other company, they're strong in some places, weak in others, and some decisions might as well be a coin flip.

What it comes down to is that, if you're a solutions provider, and you're pushing Microsoft, you need to be able to tell me why it's better to implement your solution instead of going with something else.

For example, can anyone tell me why I would consider implementing Microsoft ISA Server over some other solution (that's a serious question. I have no knowledge of the ups or downs of ISA Server, or whatever they're calling it now, but can anyone make a good argument as to why it's a better solution over say an IronPort? I have pretty good knowledge of the alternative products, but I've never heard a single good reasoned argument for actually deploying ISA)

And I don't just limit this kind of thing to Microsoft. I'm a big fan of Cisco's, but I will argue tooth and nail to avoid a Cisco solution if there's a better one available.

Claymoore

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Or then you run into folks with my perception, which is that Microsoft products are bloated, buggy, and inflexible, which is based on my past experience (and I'll take the pepsi challenge on linux vs. windows on resource usage any day of the week). That gets pretty hard to overcome.

That's the opinion to which Robert is referring, and it's especially hard to overcome when the holder of that opinion has no current experience with Windows products or the desire to evaluate them fairly:

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Now, I'm sure the quality of Windows products are much improved. I wouldn't know first hand, I've worked very hard to get away from anything that even reeks of Windows administration. I've had too many headaches with Microsoft solutions in the past, and I just find their products to be frustrating to work with. Unix makes sense to me.

I have participated in bake-offs at client sites where the results were calculated and the decision made before any tests were run. We were just there to put on a show to satisfy some organizational requirement to consider a certain number of vendors. One client in particular was looking at virtualization technologies and wrote up their comparison based on the features of 2008 Hyper-V even though we were actually deploying and testing 2008 R2 Hyper-V. Trying to explain that to multiple account executives and VPs was a good time.

Claymoore

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

For example, can anyone tell me why I would consider implementing Microsoft ISA Server over some other solution (that's a serious question. I have no knowledge of the ups or downs of ISA Server, or whatever they're calling it now, but can anyone make a good argument as to why it's a better solution over say an IronPort? I have pretty good knowledge of the alternative products, but I've never heard a single good reasoned argument for actually deploying ISA)

Here's a good reason - you've already paid for it. If you have some type of volume license agreement with an Enterprise Client Access License, you already have Forefront licenses. It's strange to see clients go with a competitor when they already have MS licenses. I have seen clients choose Google Mail over Exchange - even though they had Exchange CALs - and you know that decision was made due to politics or religion and not features or cost. I have also spoke to clients about OCS/Lync because they have the licenses in their EA, and if it can provide anything even close to the service they could get from Cisco, they will deploy it because they have essentially already bought it.

@Forsaken_GA - Totally off topic, but I just noticed the 'Winter is Coming' in your sig. Have you read the Song of Ice and Fire series? A Dance With Dragons *might* finally be published in July.

RobertKaucher

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Thinking on it more, I guess the best way to sum up my viewpoint is that I don't like Microsoft, but I don't let my likes and dislikes get in the way of doing my job to the best of my ability.

Then I don't suppose that you would run around like a ninny and tell everyone how bad something is after the choice had already been made by the sr. staff and there was already a team working on the project. And that is what upset me the most. If you and I disagree on SharePoint, that's fine. But if you are actively making my job harder to do... Well...

Turgon

Claymoore wrote: »

Here's a good reason - you've already paid for it. If you have some type of volume license agreement with an Enterprise Client Access License, you already have Forefront licenses. It's strange to see clients go with a competitor when they already have MS licenses. I have seen clients choose Google Mail over Exchange - even though they had Exchange CALs - and you know that decision was made due to politics or religion and not features or cost. I have also spoke to clients about OCS/Lync because they have the licenses in their EA, and if it can provide anything even close to the service they could get from Cisco, they will deploy it because they have essentially already bought it.

@Forsaken_GA - Totally off topic, but I just noticed the 'Winter is Coming' in your sig. Have you read the Song of Ice and Fire series? A Dance With Dragons *might* finally be published in July.

Commercial reasons are important, they often hold sway. So does scale and familiarity which has a cost associated with it. I have seen decisions go the way of vendor x because there is someone to beat up when things go wrong as opposed to opensource.

Everyone

With changes in the EA, my boss is forcing us to look at alternatives because they don't want to fork over the $$$ to renew our EA. Plus no matter how I try to explain it, people here can't seem to understand how the EA works, and I'm not the person responsible for it.

I'm seen as "The Microsoft guy" here. I like Microsoft because I've made my living off of supporting their products for 12 years now. However there are products I'd use from other vendors over a Microsoft solution any day. VMware for example, I love it. I haven't messed with Hyper-V much at all, so I can't make a fair comparison, but I've really liked working with VMware.

It really throws people off to see the resident "Microsoft Guy" using Linux as a host desktop with Windows 7 running on VMware Workstation, and managing an OpenSource Instant Messaging solution on CentOS.

Turgon

Everyone wrote: »

I'm seen as "The Microsoft guy" here. I like Microsoft because I've made my living off of supporting their products for 12 years now. However there are products I'd use from other vendors over a Microsoft solution any day.

A good consultant understands this, but it's often not about what is best 'in and of itself.' It is about what is best for a given situation. I worked with a network consultant in 1999 who was rolling out NT. He was catagoric. SMS is pants compared to Zen works. Exchange is not as good as Notes. But taken together the benefits of the whole NT solution outweigh the problems of trying to run a mixed environment. He was a designer who referred to support 12 years ago as 'a thankless task'. Evaded it and got paid so much more. I was in support then but have been designing for years now. Nothing has changed in that respect.

Forsaken_GA

Claymoore wrote: »

That's the opinion to which Robert is referring, and it's especially hard to overcome when the holder of that opinion has no current experience with Windows products or the desire to evaluate them fairly:

Well, that's just it - I've evaluated them in the past, and found them lacking. That means I've had to turn to other solutions to fulfill the needs.

Now, it's entirely possible that between now and then, Microsoft caught up, but because a vendor finally managed to achieve parity is not a compelling reason to change, particularly if it means a significant increase of opex and capex. If the majority of the infrastructure is unix based, and it meets or exceeds your needs, but now a Microsoft solution could also fill those needs, why would you change? There has to be some compelling reason and a significant ROI to make that kind of change, and it simply hasn't bee there for every existing infrastructure I've worked in. On the flip side of that, if you have a Microsoft solution, and you're looking to drive cost down, then a unix solution that achieves the same goals can have a significant ROI just from forgoing the licensing costs.

Now, I realize that's generalized, and I understand that the kind of business you're in can have a significant impact on those kinds of decisions as well.

it_consultant

I won't defend Microsoft's licensing schemes because I don't think anyone can. That does not mean the software itself is bad. I have seen a great many very stable MS based networks and a great many unstable MS networks. I have seen almost unusable linux networks and extremely fast and efficient linux networks. You have to pick your poison and get a competent professional to do the implementation. I see it almost every day, people screwing up their MS products and blaming MS for what they did wrong.

Here, this should lighten the mood:

How to fix any computer - The Oatmeal