[Cumbria] Linux in the workplace

[Roger Cope]

Schwuk schwuked:

>      Done a presentation yesterday on my backup system for vaxes which =

> [snip]

Now, normally I would say orporately it really ought to be RedHat, but =
you
need to be careful now about the  EOL'ing - I know your environment =
prefers
steady-state, so you may not want to get into the upgrade cycle just to =
stay
current. So, that said Debian should be more than suitable... I'm =
planning
to start playing with it in the very near future...

Any chance of a more complete description of your system?

Cheers
--=20
Schwuk

----------------------

A fair point, but I think it misses the point. Upgrading just because =
your
vendor tells you to and threatens to withdraw support is not a strategy =
to
bet your business on. Microsoft gets away with it simply because it was
lucky enough not to have a competitor this time around. I am hopeful =
that
things will change in two or three years when they come back to us with =
a
begging bowl.

I see no business reason to upgrade Linux simply because RedHat tells =
you
to. I do it at home because I like getting new packages and can't be
bothered to roll my own. At work, one would have to look at the pay back =
and
anyone who has looked at the release dates of many Linux components will
realise that most are extremely stable and some are so stable they are
abandonware.

BNFL, particularly on the Control Systems side, has a large investment =
in
VMS and Oracle versions (and the hardware they run on) that it is no =
longer
supported and may not be commercially supportable. Linux, where you can
probably find a grey-beard to support most things and a keen C hacker to
work through the source code for the rest, is a step up, not down -
whichever distribution you plump for.

Going RedHat is a certification thing. All linuxes look the same to =
someone
who's any good with C. Only RedHat looks good to an auditor or regulator =
who
is expecting a certification pinned to the forehead of the person =
running
it.

Roger