Your thoughts on Linux

[locosway]

I think you should be my mentor for Linux, would love to have a professional help me with the Linux OS!

Shoot me a message anytime with questions.

[KillZone45]

Well, I've been using Linux at home for 10 years now. Because of my playing with Linux early on I've held several nice paying jobs supporting the Linux OS. I must say, I'm very fond of the Linux OS as a whole and have converted a few family members over to it.

So, what do you think of Linux?

I think you should be my mentor for Linux, would love to have a professional help me with the Linux OS!

[JDay]

I know their pro-Winders side had to do with budgets and having to spend the money or lose it next year, but they could have spent a bit less on software and a bit more on technicians

Or they could quit spending taxpayer money just to spend it, this is one of the main reasons the states economy is in such bad shape.

[locosway]

There.

80% of systems run Windows? Not quite...

I've worked in web hosting for 5 years, and to be honest, there's rarely ever a Windows machine anywhere.

As for corporate, yeah, there's a lot of Windows, but there's also a lot of Linux now as well. File servers, print servers, and anything else that doesn't require in depth knowledge of Linux has popped up.

[nick]

As an IT professional I believe in the right tool for the right job. Linux has its place, it’s great for things like SMTP and HTTP applications and other internet services that require adherence to RFC standards. Windows is great for directory services and delivery of end user applications. To each his own

Exactly. One picks the right tool for the job, not try to fit the job to the tool. Hence the Windows vs. Linux/UNIX, Mac OS vs. Windows, other such debates are quite pointless. And if one wants to be employable, he better know them all well enough to be in a position to pick the right tool for the job, rather than try to fit the job to the only (or the few) tools he knows.

[JDay]

The same goes for support - if you're lucky, you'll get to work with someone who wrote the app you need support for, and can slip in a few improvements and new features you want while fixing the issue you have. If you're not lucky, you'll be dealing with a forum where the average time between posts is measured in months or years, and the posts are usually of the "I have this problem too, did you guys figure it out" kind.

That's why we have the Freenode IRC network, you can speak to the devs on there.

http://freenode.net/

Then there's the commercial Linux distributions such as Redhat that have professional support packages.

[JDay]

I did. But I didn't want to pay for those programs and it didn't support a lot of the games that I played.

WINE is free and supports a lot more than you might think, just because a program isn't listed doesn't mean it wont run.

http://appdb.winehq.org/

[nick]

Funny, every Windows domains I've worked on, there's always some feature that's supposed to work that doesn't.

Sometimes that's due to an actual bug (there're quite a few, of course). However, in most of the cases I've dealt with it was due to the person in charge of configuring it not knowing what he was doing. Since I'm usually called in when a company's IT couldn't deal with something, I've seen quite a lot of that.

Also like to add, Windows doesn't follow standards, it follows it's own protocols. Always has. If you want a standard, then you would run something that's based on open IEEE or other standards.

They often diverge in their implementations (like most other vendors). However, that's the stereotype that's kinda old and outdated. They've changed their ways starting with Windows 2000, and got better since then.

To add to that, what's more of a standard, something that's used by 20% of the systems, or by 80%?

Besides, if you're paying someone $80k to manage a server farm or something, why not pay them to make your network work how you want it, instead of everyone else conforming to the network?

Because many companies, Microsoft included, have most features most companies want out-of-the-box, and because you don't want that farm to be a personal fiefdom of an irreplaceable IT guy, that with all the often unnecessary customizations he's introduced (which cause issues if you remove them though).

A client of mine got itself talked into a custom database engine (yeah, a custom database engine). There were few enough people who knew how to program it to begin with, fewer still working for this company. The makes of the said database engine went out of business, and my client was at the mercy of two people for whom it was a side job (they had regular jobs, as well, and those took precedence). It took quite an effort (and some padding of my savings account, as well as those of a few other people) to move them to MS SQL 2005. For which there're plenty of support people, DBAs, etc., not to mention Microsoft itself

There.

[JDay]

As far as servers go, its nice provided you are not planning on taking advantage of Windows Domain type security.

Not true at all, for one thing you can use kerberos for secure authentication.

http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_%28protocol%29

I forgot about LDAP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDAP

[JDay]

I used to use Slackware and Gentoo (lol I was a stickler for punishment).

Both of those work quite well if you know what you're doing. With Gentoo all you have to do is make sure you're running off the stable branch and make proper use of /etc/portage/portage.*. Slackware has a binary package system now so its much simpler than it used to be.

[advocatusdiaboli]

I've always had some Linux running somewhere, whether in a router, firewall, proxy server, or file/music/web server.We use Linux in a file/web server and I run a few VMs on my Desktop (8-core OS X Leopard UNIX) for testing sometimes. We mostly "use" OS X UNIX at home--it does everything my wife and daughters would do with Windows and more and much of it for free and with near-zero risk of viruses unlike Windows and it does the heavy lifting I need in After-effects, Modo, Photoshop, and Final Cut Studio--can't get those on Linux.

We use UNIX because I have to maintain all the systems so Ssh and Rsync are my friends. I consider it an evolved Linux by way of BSD UNIX.

Unlike some others, I have found OS X not to be locked down at all and as a former Sun systems engineer, I can tell you it's open. Just about everything that runs on Linux is ported to OS X through Macports even using GTK and X-11. The only Windows in our house is a Vista-64 game machine and a Window 7 and XP virtual machine--all three are used very rarely any more.

[juicemansam]

I've used Linux since the '94. I've only held one IT position since then, which was a Computer Tech position for a school district. The district was very anti-Linux and very pro-Winders. I was left to my own devices, no training on their techniques or protocols, only who's who and where's half of the equipment. Luckly for me I had Linux on my side. Linux got me threw the year, and never let me down, including when I had to clone whole computer labs. I know their pro-Winders side had to do with budgets and having to spend the money or lose it next year, but they could have spent a bit less on software and a bit more on technicians (I was covering 4 schools when everybody else had one or two). Woohoo Linux! Oh, and it's what I use on my PC. I only emulate Winders if I need to test something before I install it on my brothers' computers, and teh only time I touch Winders is when I service the PCs.

[danito]

Back in the very early 90's I had the great fortune or miss fortune (depending on how you look at it) of working with SCO Unix, this was before they tried to sue everyone and their brothers for Linux patent rights (but that another story) At any rate back in the day SCO Unix was a true system five Unix variant that would run on Intel processors which made it very cost effective when compared to other System Five Unix variants such Sparc Solaris systems (Good, Bad or indifferent BSD is a whole different animal) That experience was useful in adopting Linux a few years later. I stay true to my roots and prefer the Fedora distro.

As an IT professional I believe in the right tool for the right job. Linux has its place, it’s great for things like SMTP and HTTP applications and other internet services that require adherence to RFC standards. Windows is great for directory services and delivery of end user applications. To each his own

[bigmike82]

"Besides, if you're paying someone $80k to manage a server farm or something, why not pay them to make your network work how you want it, instead of everyone else conforming to the network?"
9 times out of 10, Windows AD fits that bill *way* better than the Linux equivalents.

"Funny, every Windows domains I've worked on, there's always some feature that's supposed to work that doesn't."
Examples?

[locosway]

Funny, every Windows domains I've worked on, there's always some feature that's supposed to work that doesn't.

Also like to add, Windows doesn't follow standards, it follows it's own protocols. Always has. If you want a standard, then you would run something that's based on open IEEE or other standards.

Besides, if you're paying someone $80k to manage a server farm or something, why not pay them to make your network work how you want it, instead of everyone else conforming to the network?