Re[2]: [Cumbria] Linux in the workplace

[Ian Linwood]

Hello Roger,

Thursday, February 6, 2003, 9:54:26 PM, you wrote:

> 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.

Well said! Roger, I've got you completely wrong. I'm now listening...

> 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.

Unfortunately, not so...look at kernel 2.4.10...Aargh! Mega broken.
:-(
All vendors (MS, SUN, RH, et al.) are guilty of this. This has
happened with application patches too.
As an example (from memory, but not linux related) SUN recently
released a security update, which made systems insecure.

Unix, GNU, MS software, all suffer from the same problems. What makes
the difference is the response to this failure. MS wait 6 months then
discretely announce a patch (after all their software is faultless).
Look at the problems caused by the SQL slammer worm. The
Unix/Linux/GNU community tend to had a fix within hours of their faux
pax.

> 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

Hey! I'm not that old.

>  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.

As I continually rant...distro's are NOT relevant.

Enlightenment - and I don't mean the Gnome Windows Manager.

> Going RedHat is a certification thing. All linuxes look the same to someone
> who's any good with C.

:-)  me - but becoming a Java bean lately...

> Only RedHat looks good to an auditor or regulator who
> is expecting a certification pinned to the forehead of the person running
> it.

Bloody bureaucrats and paper pushers. We'll end up in the same
situation as MS. MCSE's are completely discredited. I understand why.
I've seem MCSE's who couldn't change a DT from DHCP to static - and
didn't understand the difference!! Paper only experience is USELESS.

BTW, I have MS certification...but I'm not proud of it. Do a
Checkpoint FW-1 engineer exam - you will then KNOW you've been tested.

-- 
Best regards,
 Ian                            mailto:ian@darksideofthemoon.org.uk