Windows is popular because . . . . . . . . .

"Windows is a requirement because enough people grew up with it, not the other way around. If OLPC made a billion people grow up with Linux, Linux would be just dandy for business."

$100 laptop' embraces Windows XP
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7402365.stm

Hurm, I grew up using all sorts of different computers. Our first was a Tandy Trash 80, then Apple IIgs, then MS-DOS.

I think it's safe to say I feel comfortable on a variety of OS' from XP to OS X to Fedora.

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sprkymrk

@liven

I don't think you are being combative or argumentative at all. Your opinions are expressed in a sane and logical, unemotional manner. Many (not all) linux fans simply bash MS based on older MS technologies like Win98 and WinNT, as if W2K3 and XP are the same beast as the former. I would hardly call your posts "rants", but rather worthy of consideration.

I like both Linux and Windows, mostly for the reasons already described.

Windows obviously knows how to market better than Linux, and has the money to do so, but you won't find passionate Windows users in the same way you do passionate linux users.

liven

sprkymrk wrote:

@liven

I don't think you are being combative or argumentative at all. Your opinions are expressed in a sane and logical, unemotional manner. Many (not all) linux fans simply bash MS based on older MS technologies like Win98 and WinNT, as if W2K3 and XP are the same beast as the former. I would hardly call your posts "rants", but rather worthy of consideration.

I like both Linux and Windows, mostly for the reasons already described.

Windows obviously knows how to market better than Linux, and has the money to do so, but you won't find passionate Windows users in the same way you do passionate linux users.

Thanks bro!!!

snadam

sprkymrk wrote:

@liven

I don't think you are being combative or argumentative at all. Your opinions are expressed in a sane and logical, unemotional manner. Many (not all) linux fans simply bash MS based on older MS technologies like Win98 and WinNT, as if W2K3 and XP are the same beast as the former. I would hardly call your posts "rants", but rather worthy of consideration.

I like both Linux and Windows, mostly for the reasons already described.

Windows obviously knows how to market better than Linux, and has the money to do so, but you won't find passionate Windows users in the same way you do passionate linux users.

+1 I think this follows suit (although worded much better) as my post. Having an open mind and viewing all the benefits of every product will only make you a better IT person, IMO.

liven

Claymoore wrote:

Windows is popular because it's cheaper...

Cheaper than free? Yes - because licensing is just one of the costs that you must consider. Hardware is also a cost factor, but staffing and support cost more over the lifetime of the product than the hardware and up front licensing.

Supporting Windows applications just costs less:
1. There are plenty of available Windows administrators, driving down labor costs. It's a supply and demand thing...

2. There is a large, documented body of knowledge for MS products driving down vendor support costs. My company spends over $100k a year in vendor support for our HP-UX systems and we also have support contracts with EMC, Cisco and an application-specific Linux box. Our Windows 'support contract' consists of the 5 support incidents that come with our Technet subscription.

3. Complex products still have relatively standardized installations, driving down knowledge-worker retention costs. For example, if I left my company tomorrow, an admin with a decent knowledge of Exchange could walk in to our single-server installation and keep things running with little or no interruption. A Linux implementation that would achieve the same functionality of Exchange would be so highly customized that the company would have to pay a lot of money to keep the tech who built/manages the product around or risk a severe interruption.

4. There is a large user base familiar with the product, reducing or eliminating user training costs. Everyone has used Microsoft Office, but few users have ever even heard of Star Office.

When you start considering flavors of Unix, Windows really starts to seem cheap.

1. A NIC for one of my Windows servers costs $90 - the same card for one of our HP-UX servers costs $900. WTF? Depending on the part (memory, CPU, etc) we may have to schedule and use some of our pre-paid CE time to perform the install or risk problems with our support contract. Meanwhile I can trust my helpdesk tech to successfully install hardware in a Windows server.

2. Oracle is licensed per processor, but you have to count each core as .75 of a processor and round up. A dual-core processor is 1.5 processors which gets rounded up to 2 processor licenses. MS SQL is licensed per-processor regardless of how many cores the processor has. SQL DBAs are also cheaper and easier to find than Oracle DBAs.

Finally, you have to understand the psychology and needs of corporate managers. There is an old adage that says 'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM'. Now the same thought goes into buying Cisco, EMC and Microsoft - even if it's not the best choice, it's a safe choice. Managers also need to forecast budgets one or sometimes several years in advance. Microsoft announces product release dates years in advance so people can forecast when they need to buy new licenses and servers. Linux kernel releases seem to be more inspirational and that makes it difficult for the budget folks.

Great points.

But when your company uses the same type of servers for both linux and windows (my current job they are usually DELL) and when one OS is free (linux, Freebsd) and the other one isn't. This argument doesn't really apply.

On top of that there are is massive support communities for every distro of linux and unix and they are all free to access. Of course you can't call anyone on the phone and put in a trouble ticket. This is a major downside for a lot of companies, and a reason why many of them avoid open source.

I have not noticed a major difference in the cost of windows admins versus linux/unix admins. If you don't mind could you please post a link to the documentation you spoke of earlier in your post?

Thanks!

liven

snadam wrote:

sprkymrk wrote:

@liven

I don't think you are being combative or argumentative at all. Your opinions are expressed in a sane and logical, unemotional manner. Many (not all) linux fans simply bash MS based on older MS technologies like Win98 and WinNT, as if W2K3 and XP are the same beast as the former. I would hardly call your posts "rants", but rather worthy of consideration.

I like both Linux and Windows, mostly for the reasons already described.

Windows obviously knows how to market better than Linux, and has the money to do so, but you won't find passionate Windows users in the same way you do passionate linux users.

+1 I think this follows suit (although worded much better) as my post. Having an open mind and viewing all the benefits of every product will only make you a better IT person, IMO.

I couldn't agree more. Seems like for me the more I learn about one thing (in this case OS's) the more I want to learn about the other related entities.

hypnotoad

The other day I watched one of our senior admins trying to get his ubuntu laptop to work with dual monitors -- it was working OK except that the secondary monitor was only 640x480. After messing with the config files, restarting X, googling it, apting in some utils, etc, he gave up after 2 hours.

QED

undomiel

liven wrote:

I couldn't agree more. Seems like for me the more I learn about one thing (in this case OS's) the more I want to learn about the other related entities.

I'm having that problem. The more I work on my MCSE the more I want to hurry up and get started on working on the RHCE.

HeroPsycho

You gotta watch that. Not to crap on linux or anything like that, but it's pretty easy to get locked into being a midlevel engineer by knowing a bunch of OS's fairly well instead of being an expert in a platform and some apps.

Make sure you become an Ace in a platform and some enterprise level apps that run on it before becoming a Jack in a bunch of OS's.

blargoe

I like both, and will use either depending on the company, application, and situation. My current job situation is a 99.8% Microsoft shop though.

Judging from my experience in vastly different environments over the past 8 years or so, personal familiarity with the OS weighs in heavily. Another major factor is not so much the OS itself, but the application it is serving out and in which OS environment it plays best. Oracle and MySQL have been ported to Windows, but were originally written for Unix and anectodally, seem to work better on those OSes. If you're an oracle shop, there's a good chance you're also a Unix or Linux shop. Same with Apache.

liven

HeroPsycho wrote:

You gotta watch that. Not to crap on linux or anything like that, but it's pretty easy to get locked into being a midlevel engineer by knowing a bunch of OS's fairly well instead of being an expert in a platform and some apps.

Make sure you become an Ace in a platform and some enterprise level apps that run on it before becoming a Jack in a bunch of OS's.

True. I can't agree more.

Which is exactly why I have focused on linux/unix for the last 7 plus years. And trust me it is paying of in a major way (just got a senior unix admin position at a major corporation).

But I would still like to bring my windows skills a little more up to speed. In the beggining for me all I did was windows stuff (professionaly). This was back in the NT days. I was really comfortable doing just about anything with windows back then. But not so much now. As much of a stretch as it sounds I would like to be as comfortable on windows as I am on unix/linux.

undomiel

HeroPsycho wrote:

You gotta watch that. Not to crap on linux or anything like that, but it's pretty easy to get locked into being a midlevel engineer by knowing a bunch of OS's fairly well instead of being an expert in a platform and some apps.

Make sure you become an Ace in a platform and some enterprise level apps that run on it before becoming a Jack in a bunch of OS's.

Or I could just become an expert in both OS'! It's doable and from what I see around Phoenix at least (and California) there are a lot of companies that are looking for Linux and Windows interoperability. Windows has command of the desktop easily enough but there's a fair amount of back end that is on Linux.

liven

undomiel wrote:

HeroPsycho wrote:

You gotta watch that. Not to crap on linux or anything like that, but it's pretty easy to get locked into being a midlevel engineer by knowing a bunch of OS's fairly well instead of being an expert in a platform and some apps.

Make sure you become an Ace in a platform and some enterprise level apps that run on it before becoming a Jack in a bunch of OS's.

Or I could just become an expert in both OS'! It's doable and from what I see around Phoenix at least (and California) there are a lot of companies that are looking for Linux and Windows interoperability. Windows has command of the desktop easily enough but there's a fair amount of back end that is on Linux.

+1

My plans as well. But I feel like I am kind of working backwards. Need to really hit the windows stuff hard. I am not a newbie, just need a lot of WD40.

undomiel

Integration of the two is where I'm focusing. I've been working with Linux since December and have had it running 100% on my desktop since then (all Windows work for studying has been in a VM) and I also integrated a server into AD here at work and have a DFS running across it. Still trying to sort out some replication issues but it has been pretty good so far.

snadam

undomiel wrote:

Or I could just become an expert in both OS'! It's doable and from what I see around Phoenix at least (and California) there are a lot of companies that are looking for Linux and Windows interoperability. Windows has command of the desktop easily enough but there's a fair amount of back end that is on Linux.

yep, thats what ive been noticing over the past couple years. Its hard to find JUST a windows or JUST a *NIX job. They want it all!

liven

undomiel wrote:

Integration of the two is where I'm focusing. I've been working with Linux since December and have had it running 100% on my desktop since then (all Windows work for studying has been in a VM) and I also integrated a server into AD here at work and have a DFS running across it. Still trying to sort out some replication issues but it has been pretty good so far.

Not a bad idea.

For instance at my new job, there will be some windows administration. Mostly linux/unix but in the interview they made it clear that windows will be involved now.

And my current job and actually my former job were both windows and unix.

Granted I am most a linux/unix admin. The work I have done on *nux has to work and play nice with windows and vice versa.

And like we stated before there are just something that are best suited for each operating system.

However remember why heropsycho stated. It is better to become a master of one then a jack of all. Perhaps a master jacker!!!! hahahahaa

undomiel

liven wrote:

It is better to become a master of one then a jack of all. Perhaps a master jacker!!!! hahahahaa

Ok I am revoking your coffee privileges effective immediately.