[Gllug] Cost of RedHat vs Ubuntu desktop support

[JLMS]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 11:24 AM, - Tethys<tethys at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:20 AM, JLMS<jjllmmss at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> In my opinion one should agree to a base system with the geeks which
>> they are happy with, and then lock it down.
>
> "The geeks" isn't particularly helpful. We're not a homogeneous lump.
> A system that most of my co-worker would be happy with would be hell
> for me, and probably vice versa.


No, it isn't, I agree, still a compromise can be reached. In my
experience once everybody understands how those compromises are
reached everybody pulls his weight to move things forward.

Most problems arise when the preferences of a person of group of
people are set as "standards" and then forced upon the rest of the
people in the organization without much consultation.

A big part of administering systems is actually talking to people,
this is an skill that is rarely thought but is one of the most useful.


>
>> In any operation bigger than two guys in their garage, somebody should
>> be nominated as the infrastructure maintainer and be given the power
>> to do his job.
>
> I agree with the principle wholeheartedly. I just disagree with your
> threshold.

It was just a figure of speech :-)

I think by the time you have 10 people working together this becomes
an issue. At such point doing everything manually and at the whim of
each person seems to me terribly wasteful.

> I'd say once you get above 25 or so employees, you need
> to start considering locked down desktop. But below that, the benefits
> of having a stable desktop don't justify the loss in productivity,
> particularly in a small high tech startup, where people generally
> know what they're doing, and can fix their own problems. And depending
> on the make up of the company that threshold should be adjusted up or
> down accordingly.
>
> Tet
>

I would never question the ability of people to fix their own
problems, my point of contention is that division of work  and
standardization exist for a reason, if your organization needs to save
money (the immense majority of them I would say) having standard,
secure installations saves time and money in my experience.
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