How Open Source Has Influenced Windows Server 2008 145
willdavid writes to tell us that Sam Ramji over at Port25 has a nice succinct list of the major open source principles that have been used while developing Windows Server 2008. "Overall, we've learned and continue to learn from open source development principles. These are making their way into the mindset, development practices, and ultimately into the products we bring to market. I've focused here on 'what Microsoft has learned from Open Source' - and ironically, I've agreed to do a panel at OSBC on 3/25 with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation on 'what Open Source can learn from Microsoft'. As all of the different organizations in IT continue to evolve, we'll learn from each others' best practices and make increasingly better software. As in science, this incremental improvement will move all of us forward."
What they can learn (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, wait...how to release commercial software on par with an untested, alpha Linux flavor and have all their customers switch back to an old version?
Or maybe how to give consumers what they "want"?
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Re:What they can learn (Score:5, Informative)
You want to run buggy versions of GCC and Apache?
All joking aside, as long as you didn't use glib/statically compiled your application, I believe Linux 1.0 apps WILL run flawlessly on Linux 2.6 kernels. The kernel's userspace ABI has been very stable.
(Of course internal ABI/API stability has historically been on the order of six months :P).
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The X server is compatible, so it's not a problem. If the application used
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I am a troll?
I hope you call rot in proprietary software hell!
-Hack
Embrace, extend, extinguish? (Score:4, Insightful)
What FOSS can learn from MS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What FOSS can learn from MS? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't want your OS to become the dominant OS in the PC market, yes.
Re:What FOSS can learn from MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you want a hobby that pays for itself, rationality doesn't come into it.
Re:What FOSS can learn from MS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows' dominance has pretty little to do with Windows per se. Microsoft got lucky (and that "luck" is remarkably disputable as it seems possible they set IBM up) when they launched Windows 3 and abandoned OS/2 development to rename OS/2 3.0 as NT. Windows 3, 3.1, WfW were very popular partly because software makers embraced them. Shortly after that, Microsoft inked highly desirable exclusive deals with OEMs and _that_, not Windows, like the clever deal with IBM about exclusivity and PC-DOS that allowed the clone industry to exist, was key to their position in the market now.
Very little changed.
If Linux is ever to get the dominance Microsoft enjoys today, the key is not R&D but the relationship with OEMs and software makers.
I would be careful (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I would be careful (Score:5, Informative)
Star Trek analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
-Bring it up on the main screen.
We are Microsoft. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be Embraced.
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Take on of your mother's little helpers. Fix ya right up.
all the best,
drew
Open source development principles? (Score:5, Insightful)
What are those, exactly? I'll bet he couldn't name them. I'll bet no one can. It's a bazaar, not a cathedral!
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It means they are going to copy Google (Score:2)
While they are at it. (Score:2, Funny)
Lessons Learned (Score:5, Funny)
Cue Henry Spencer quote (Score:5, Informative)
As Henry Spencer has said (and also as quoted by some commentators on the original page)
Microsoft just fails to understand what actually makes the success of Linux and F/LOSS, and thus they are only ble to pull out pale copy of what they think they've seen in order to fill such PR announcements.
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As an example, their entry about "Modular architectures" is almost funny if not tragic, citing OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox as examples (which are actually criticized by the Linux community sometimes for being too bloated). What makes *nices systems cool isn't the ability to stuff plugins into big apps, what makes them cool is the "Unix way" : programs that just do 1 thing but do it well. Modularity is about all these small single-function programs and all those libraries (for ex.: pattern finding, on-the-fly compression, conversion filters, multimedia processing, etc) that can be freely played with by the user and assembled into more complex never-intended-for-this-usage construction, which forms the basis for huge application like those cited above. Application like VLC aren't an example of modularity, but an example of what modularity enables by putting together a bunch of functions already provided by libraries.
Also the ultimate advantage of F/LOSS is about freedom and the feeling that the software you have belongs to you. Something that is completely un-achievable with Microsoft style softwares.
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The recent "opening" of some of MS protocols and specifications blends well into this PR strategy.
One other quote (Score:2)
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REJOICE, MY GEEK BROTHERS! YOU NEED NO LONGER FEAR CLOSED SOURCE! IT WILL NOT REFUSE TO WORK FOR YOU MERELY BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SEE THE SOURCE CODE!
Come on now. The freedom to change the code is in no way a feature of the software. It's entirely separate from the software, and if my software isn't doing what I need it to do, it doesn't matter whethe
No full access. (Score:2)
No sorry. If you don't have absolute full access to the software *and* code, if you are not in a system where the software you received *now belongs to you*, you'll never be allowed to do *whatever the fuck you want to do* with the software. For the free/libre software proponent, the access to source is a natur
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what microsoft can learn from open source (Score:1)
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Ramji doesn't understand a thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
You can find these wherever you see participation at scale - and often a rearchitecture to a more modular system precedes expanded participation. Great examples of this are Firefox, OpenOffice, and X11 - from both the historical rearchitecture and the increased participation that resulted. The Apache HTTP server and APR are good examples that have been modular for as long as I can recall.
A given project uses a consistent language, but there are no rules on what languages are in scope or out of scope. Being open to more languages means opportunity to attract more developers - the diversity of PHP/Perl/Python/Java has been a core driver in the success of a number of projects including Linux.
The "power user" as product manager is a powerful shift in how to build and tune software - and this class of users includes developers who are not committing code back, but instead submitting CRs and defects - resulting in a product that better fits its end users.
frequently seen in applications of Linux, the ability to build a system that has just what is needed to fulfill its role and nothing else (think of highly customizable distributions like Gentoo or BusyBox, as well as fully custom deployments).
ability of a skilled system administrator to write the "last mile" code means that they can make a technology work in their particular environment efficiently and often provide good feedback to developers. This is so fundamental to Unix and Linux environments that most sysadmins are competent programmers.
Whether the standard is something from the IETF or W3C, or simply the implementation code itself, where these are used projects are more successful (think of Asterisk and IAX2) and attract a larger ecosystem of software around them.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
It may not have been what you wanted them to learn, though. Frankly, a Microsoft may (metaphorically) buy things at your church bake sale or play basketball with your kids, but they're never going to convert to your religion.
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Where we diverge is that I see the Cathedral and the Bazaar as complementary rather than antithetical, encouraging the growth of technology taken as a whole, not stifling it.
There are kinds of software that each, in a vacuum, is good at producing, and kinds of software that they aren't good at producing. If Open Office is "good enough" for many purposes, it's because it stands on the shoulders of Cathedral giants like Office. If Windows Server 2008 is a good s
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And take a look at Active Directory. It's builot on the open standards of Kerberos, dynamic DNS, DHCP, LDAP, and the like, all woven together and proprietized in ways that not break compatib
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He seems to be conflating open source principles and the Unix philosophy. Perhaps a principle of open source would be, um, opening the source.
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It may sem a triviality, but the point is that a lot of Windows users dislike MS too, they just do not know enough about alternatives to jump ship: they have lots of misconceptions about it and think it is only for Unix geeks.
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Oh sure they are, until some douchebag patents the prior art and it gets rubber-stamped by the USPTO.
What Open Source Can Learn From Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
If you just say it's great you can get more of the market.
If you say you innovate people believe you.
If you name your product close to the more popular true standard you can confuse the PHBs into paying you money instead.
If the competition is winning tell everyone your competitor is unfair to competition.
If people like a bad practice, and it's yours, then keep doing it.
There more money in prolonging the problem then just putting out a solution.
If you can convince a big bux company to buy your product it is a good vehicle for the advertising/PR department.
No mater how much you neglect your customers' previous purchases, privacy and security, you can still keep them buying your products.
oh lordy (Score:2)
what open source can learn from Microsoft
You mean like how to rush stuff to market? Or perhaps how to copy features (poorly) from successful competing products and patent as your own? Or maybe you mean how to publish an API in which you promise not to sue people for utilizing it, only to stab your users in the back as soon as they make something better than you (that's soon to come down the pipe I'm sure)? I've said it once and I'll say it a million times. Fuck off Microsoft. The world doesn't need you. Sooner or later the rest of the world
Software Engineering 101? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with MSFT is not that they don't know these things. They do. But the internal power structure in MSFT is so driven by "if the playing field is level, we will lose" cowards. So they still do things that was ok when they held a 20% share against Word Perfect and 10% (by revenue) share against unix and mainframe giants, back in the late 80 and early 90s. They got lots of money and grew too fat and have too many layers of management. So they go and hire this dogbert to tell them what they already know.
When did Linux stop being "cancer" & "communis (Score:1, Troll)
Sam offered to come speak at our local LUG, and we turned him down, because we didn't think that he had anything of relevance to say to us. So be advised, M
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Yeah, god help you listen to anyone outside the groupthink.
Civil, open discourse on both sides can do nothing but benefit everyone. Grow up.
Re:When did Linux stop being "cancer" & "commu (Score:4, Informative)
This is what Microsoft did to pen computing. Do we have pen computing today? No. Because Microsoft announced pen windows. Pen computing died. Then so went pen windows.
Were some of these companies responsible for their actions? Absolutely. They helped their own demise. The lesson learned from Microsoft is not to demonstrate your product to them for they will steal the ideas, just as they are stealing the ideas of the open source community under the guise of learning from them and teaching back. Microsoft will not do anything for free.
Apple showed Microsoft their version of the Mac prior to the official release. They wanted Microsoft to develop their word processor and spreadsheet for it. Microsoft did that, but they also took all the ideas and made Windows. When confronted Gates simply slapped Jobs in the face telling him to grow up. What was Jobs to do? His product demanded applications and Microsoft was a leading developer, even though they'd purchased their Macintosh word and excel programs from other companies.
With open source it is still subject to the stealing of technological ideas from a closed source vendor but that's part of the benefit. Open Source benefits by the exposure of companies such as Microsoft stealing other's ideas instead of developing them themselves, which they seem nearly incapable of doing.
Essentially, Microsoft has created over the past 2 decades the air of distrust due to outright theft and manipulative practices that ultimately were deemed illegal by the court system.
What is best is that the open source community continue it's uninfluenced progress toward the time when all software is developed in the same manner.
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You'd be very hard pressed to find much if anything Open Source in the extremely broad category of "things that developers don't want, on average, more than non-developers" that doesn't owe a serious debt of inspiration, if not more, to the Closed Source world. E.g. Open Office, Firefox, GIMP.
You'd equally be very hard pressed to find much if anything in the Closed Source world produced in the last 10+ years in the broad categor
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You almost sounded reasonable until this line. Open-source software is not a fucking obligation. Who the hell are you to dictate what I can and can't do with something I create?
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Why is this behavior 'stealing' and 'theft' when done by Microsoft, but nothing when done by an open source developer/project.
I've got some reality-check news for you. Information wants to be free. This is a much more fundamental tenet than any FOSS stuff. So if you dont want people to duplicate your work, dont show it to them before you start selling it.
But once its out there, and you show anybody, then unless NDAs were signed and enforceable, then anyone and everyone can take your ideas an
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Besides the arrogance of using the GPL as the measuring stick (as if all the other licenses were irrelevant), if this is your threshold for acceptable action by the part of Microsoft I'd recommend just keeping up the "lalalala i can't hear you" routine. It will be much more rewarding in the long term.
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When Microsoft has opened up its protocols and file formats, has released some significant software under the GPL or a BSD license, and has established a couple years of cooperating with open source, maybe throws in a bunch of patents, then people will start to believe that Microsoft is going to walk the walk. For now, they still look to most people like they're just talking the talk, and they'll have to be understanding if most people don't believe them, trust them, or want much to do with them. Especially since the situation on the ground is that FOSS can defeat Microsoft and the broader world of proprietary software *without* Microsoft's help, and it might even be counter-productive to cooperate with them. Put another way, Microsoft wouldn't be waving these olive branches around if they didn't think it was not only in their own self-interest, but more in their interest than FOSS's interest to try and play nice with FOSS.
Who cares whether a very tiny percentage of the population thinks MS is 'walking the walk'? Your viewpoint as described here has very little relevance to what is going on.
.... nothing except the goodwill of
MS is a business, they're adapting their business to a changing marketplace where there is a lot more open source. They are doing what they need to do to survive and prosper. Thats their job.
Only an idiot would suggest that Microsoft give up many billions of dollars per year of income in exchange for
Re:FOSS can learn from Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Open source by its very nature will overcome monolithic development cycles of closed source, given enough time. Closed source doesn't have the time and can't experiment much. Open source has all the time in the world.
Let's also keep in mind that 1) Microsoft is a finite entity with limited number of developers and thus a limited number of ideas, where only so many of those limited ideas will pay off (this is why they steal everyone else's ideas). 2) The Open Source community has the resources of the community as it exists "world-wide" and thus has a significantly greater chance of coming up with new and unique ideas. 3) Some ideas are just obvious and that is why you see duplicity of ideas in each platform. These ideas tho can be extended and modified faster due to Open Source's ability to have more minds looking at the product and submitting coding ideas.
If any of you read the blogs of the ex-Microsofties that left just prior to or just after the Vista release you can see clearly that each developer in the Microsoft community is a microbe that has limited access to the brain and does what they are told even if the process is to redo and undo and redo the same thing again and again. This is certain to result in significant slow downs and even failures (as we have seen with Vista).
The Open Source model will succeed because it is designed to succeed whereas closed source practices dictated by a criminal monopolist to developers using their platform tools, etc., will result in systemic failure and their ultimate demise. How long will it take? It doesn't matter because the open source community has the time and the manpower.
Sticking feathers up your butt... (Score:2, Funny)
Tyler Durden (1999)
Re:Sticking feathers up your butt... (Score:5, Funny)
Open Source has Learned From Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
It is ludicrous to think that a product that can be made cheaper and better should be put asunder because some powerful monopoly can influence the powers that be. There's no socialistic tendencies there. No communistic tendencies. It is pure capitalism that is being thwarted by Microsoft's practices. Microsoft is a bully, an entity that has one goal and that is to rake in all the money while destroying the competition and they are doing that with their monopoly.
Your privacy is being violated hundreds of millions of times a day by Microsoft with WGA/WGN and Vista's equivalent. They are able to get away with it because they don't take competition seriously because they don't have to. Would you go out and pay $2000 for a TV from Best Buy and then allow Best Buy to enter your home to verify that you didn't actually receive stolen property? What if they want to do that every week or every month (inspect your home for stolen goods)? What if they say that they'll do this with a hidden camera? Would you permit it? Say you buy frequently form Walmart. Would you permit Walmart to enter your home to inspect your property to prove you didn't steal it from the store? I think not. You wouldn't let your neighbor enter your home upon accusations that you stole something from him. You wouldn't let the police enter your home even if the neighbor filed a complaint.
What the open source community practices has learned is that Microsoft is the type of entity that uses "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic to kill solid technology and those companies trying to bring them to market. The open source community has learned that Microsoft has threatened every Linux user with 235 alleged patents claiming everyone will have a price to pay to Microsoft, without Microsoft stating specifically what is being violated. This is like an oil company stating that they are going to sue car owners for using gasoline from one of their competitors because their competitor may have allegedly use some of the IP in the gas refining process. Then they threaten the car manufacturers or large companies that use that same gasoline with lawsuits if they don't stop using the competitors gasoline. Then they refuse to say which competitors and they refuse to say which IP has been violated. BTW, that IP was probably stolen by them to begin with.
We've learned from Microsoft that they will steal IP from small entities and when caught will ignore those companies request to have Microsoft pay up. Z4 Technologies is one of those companies. In this case Microsoft was contacted about their use of the IP developed by this firm for the purpose of over the internet product activation. According to the final ruling which went in favor of Z4 Microsoft knew they were in violation of the IP of Z4 and they continued to use it. During the trial they flooded the court and Z4 with paperwork in hopes of covering it up. The day before the trial began Z4 found the evidence. Z4 won the trial and were granted approximately $100 million. In the ruling the Judge noted numerous acts of misconduct on Microsoft's part and though he could have awarded 3 times the amount he only awarded an additional $25 million in special damages (which is no small amount by any measure). The Judge also noted that Microsoft had participated in these acts because they believe that Z4 was to small and to weak to defend their own IP. Upon appeal Microsoft lost with the Judge also noting the numerous acts of misconduct. With the latest appeal of this Microsoft lost that as well with all awards in tact.
But what you must understand from this is that Microsoft stole the IP of Z4 which Microsoft used to keep you from stealing their IP. So, they stole the technology
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First I used Hotmail and the Linux dudes told me BSD was evil.
Sorry, that was a typo.
BSD is a devil.
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Of course, none of it makes sense. It reminds me of when the weak AI programs were released in the early 80s where you would enter a question into a command line DOS program that program would respond with something that seemed to make sense. I remember buddies stating that if you couldn't tell it wasn't a human it was real AI. Anyone with a li
'what Open Source can learn from Microsoft' (Score:2)
Build it and they will come...
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What do you define a casual gamer? If by casual you mean the cubicle worker playing solitaire then yes I dare say you are right and I dare say they are in the majority. However if by casual gamer you mean one that plays computer implementations of licensed board games, Civ class stategy or classic arcade ports... The gamer willing to spend the odd 10, 20 maybe even 40 dollars. Which is what I consider casual gaming... Well then you are just up shit creek with out a
How Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Well this is interesting, whenever Open Source tries to learn from Microsoft Steve 'rabid-monkey-man' Ballmer starts throwing around software/idea patent threats [slashdot.org].
If this is an incremental process that can move us all forward, how about Microsoft offer up their patents to the OSDL Patent Commons [coverpages.org]? Or just allow Free/Open Source software developers to work without threat of being sued? Oh yeah, they'd rather reserve the right to sue anyone [groklaw.net] who dares to even look at their markets.
The joke that is port25.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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open source and MS (Score:1)
One thing... (Score:1)
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uh-huh (Score:3)
This is what microsoft will never "learn" because their business model depends on not learning it.
Seriously, OSS can learn from Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
- Run a study on user-usability: OSS can hire or contract an established and well-known 'GUI usability' expert/company and let every top OSS products that directly used by the end user to consult to them.
- Embrace
The problem: they do not pay for their lessons (Score:2, Insightful)
But then, they will not pay. They _claim_ to care about "intellectual property". But only when a _laywer_ that can _sue_ them, they will _respect_ the lessons to be something of value.
So I will be glad when they are destroyed, once for all, and everybody else trying to _exploit_ others' work will have something to fear for.
I mean, Microsoft _invented_ the notion that you should be paid fo
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I mean, Microsoft _invented_ the notion that you should be paid for the _same_ work over and over and over and over again. Only they profited from that. And if you are not a Microsoft shill, you will _have_ to agree that this was unethical._
Well, firstly copyright law is much older than Microsoft, so no - they did not invent that notion, and I don't even think they were the first software company to take advantage of it either.
Secondly, I am not a Microsoft 'shill' (but you will find me defending them from time to time), and I don't see why such a thing just absolutely HAS to be classed as unethical.
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Maybe the open source part really isn't the important part of building good open source software? The open part gets you developers that work mostly for free, but MS already has plenty of developers, so opening doesn't benefit them.
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That's the same regardless of open or closed source.
One of the big benefits to open source is that your developer base and your user base coincide a lot more.
I would say that's a net negative. You end up with software geared toward other software devleopers, not typical home users.
I wouldn't care to estimate the odds that if one customer wants a feature badly enough to code it, somebody else wants it badly enough to switch to your produ
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I will presume that my lack of eloquence is the reason that you failed to grasp the first point, because it is very simple: the OSS model is good at some things. The closed source model is good at others. One of the places where open source has demonstrated the most significant advantages over closed source is where the developer and user base ARE clo
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I will presume that my lack of eloquence is the reason that you failed to grasp the first point, because it is very simple: the OSS model is good at some things. The closed source model is good at others. One of the places where open source has demonstrated the most significant advantages over closed source is where the developer and user base ARE close
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This is your problem. Had you simply stated that this was your point all along, instead of pretending to be part of a reasonable discussion, we could have been done with this much more quickly. OSS has proven that it can at least enter most markets. The question of whether it can dominate those whose developer and user bases are disjoint
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For about eight years now I've been hearing "this is the year of linux on the desktop." It hasn't happened. I even gave up on it, and found that commercial software DOES meet my needs better than the OSS camp. I suspect there are many out there in a similar spot. I can't imagine the typical home user though, if it wasn'
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My initial question was simp
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Do you run Linux on your desktop? I've found this to be patently false.
Yes, I do- and more importantly, on my clients' desktops, since a major part of my job is windows to Linux migrations and the accompanying training. We consistently find that after an acclimation period productivity sits right about where it did before. It sounds like you had a bad experience, and as a developer I really am sorry about that, but it doesn't parallel what our clients find or we wouldn't be in business.
Part of my point is that the FF team has a big player backing them with money. Should that company no longer fund the primary developers, would FF survive?
Would the project continue? Yes. Would it have anywhere near the market share it does? No
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Well, you're giving them training. Are you also taking over managing the servers from then
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Well, you're giving them training. Are you also taking over managing the servers from then on? As I attempted to be a self taught admin (somewhat) sometimes I didn't care about the details of why something worked, I just wanted it to work. I can dig into the whys later. I found on Linux, I had to spend an inornate amount of time to figure out it, and the why details usually drowned out the how.
We do give them training, but we don't take over management, preferring instead to offer break-n-bake support plans and service guarantees. We do both desktops and servers, and training for both IT staff and end users. We find that end users typically cause no more problems on Linux than they do on Windows after an adjustment period, and depending on the setup, sometimes less. IT is always a hassle, but that's just the nature of the beast- people do not like retraining away from a skill set that they have
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I understand your experience differs, and that's fine as you said. However, a couple of things. Did you learn much of what you needed for Linux because you have a job doing so? I'm certainly not afraid of Linux by any means. Its just that its more difficult to learn. I do fine with shells and what not, after all I used Unix all through my five year college program. That's when I first came into contact with Linux as well. "Unix on my PC, awesome!"
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I understand your experience differs, and that's fine as you said. However, a couple of things. Did you learn much of what you needed for Linux because you have a job doing so? I'm certainly not afraid of Linux by any means. Its just that its more difficult to learn. I do fine with shells and what not, after all I used Unix all through my five year college program. That's when I first came into contact with Linux as well. "Unix on my PC, awesome!"
My areas of interest in computing are supercomputing, CPR, and (more recently) virtualization. Windows does not give me the kind of power as a developer that I need to pursue my research in those areas. After a brief flirtation with Solaris when I was in high school (the school had a Sun server), I moved to Linux full time and haven't looked back.
Your user experience is limited (it seems) to business users. That's fine as I said, but I don't think that the experience a business user of linux (who likely doesn't manage the computer they use in any way) translates to a home user well (because they have to "manage" the system themselves).
We set up all kinds of systems, in all kinds of offices (including home offices), but most of them are not centrally managed, and in many of them- especially for
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So you've never really used Windows then (the NT line.. 2000 or higher)? I've found lots of people say Windows is for morons or its overly simply. The fact is th
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So you've never really used Windows then (the NT line.. 2000 or higher)? I've found lots of people say Windows is for morons or its overly simply. The fact is that it's complex, and much of the complexity is hidden. But its there if you really need to dig in. Given that I've seen many comments about virtualization and supercomputing that mirror yours, I'm not suprised that Windows doesn't fit your needs. I would check back now and then though (maybe now, because Server 2008 is out), because MS is trying to move into these areas. I've found that they usually succeed; not on the first or second attempts, but they have a good record. I know.. that's not what most /.ers will say.
No, I've used Windows extensively. First, my high school days aren't all that far behind me, and XP was already out. Second, as part of my business- many legacy business apps cannot be ported without monumental effort, and so it is frequently the case that we set up a Windows box with a Linux passthrough.
As for Windows supercomputing, I wish them great good luck but don't see it happening, as the UNIX world's tools for HPC etc are just incredible. It would take a LONG time and a lot of money to come up w
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Heh. I get the impression you're a bit younger than me. I graduated college from a five year program before XP came out (only by months though). I've been using computers since MS-DOS 3.1 was the latest
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This is mostly what I've been saying. I know I could eventually get what I need, but in today's computers and GUI applications, if I need to go as far as going to the source, the application has failed from a usability standpoint. That's my issue, and it's likely an issue for many others.
Depends on what you mean by 'usability'. End users should never have to go further than the forums or IRC. Administrators should never have to go further than the man pages. Developers should be looking at either API documentation or source, and preferably both. All of the above are addressed in a good program, and most of the *major* projects do so. You've already said that you're not really a fan of the major avenue of assistance in Linux, which is the community forums and IRC, and I guess if that's how
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