[Klug-general] Shiny New Laptop

[Stuart Buckland]

On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 17:50 +0100, Karl Lattimer wrote:
> > neither should Windows.
> 
> My experience of win2k3 server is that it has some serious problems the
> analogy i generally use to explain the issues to users of our exchange
> server when it starts to go wrong is.
> 
> "Its kicking itself in the arse and wondering why it hurts"
> 
> win2k server was IMHO much more stable, but the software is seriously
> costly, for the simple samba sharing and roaming profiles + exchange
> you're looking at about £4.5k for 10 or so users.

As an example, the company I do work for recently rolled out bladelogic.
As the management platform for Bladelogic is Java based it can run on
Solaris, Linux and Windows (listed in order of my personal preference.
After an initial study we concluded that, for our specific organisation,
running it on Windows was the most cost effective.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-windows anything but in certain
circumstances it can prove to be a viable option.

> Updates to the OS which you can configure to run automatically,
> sometimes break it...

While this does seem to happen more than is strictly necessary with
Windows it is also a risk with any OS update, including RH.  If anything
it highlights two things.

1) The MS QA procedures aren't as rigorous as they perhaps should be.
2) Even if MS, RH or the community-at-large perform rigorous QA there is
always a need for some level of in-house QA before patches/updates are
applied to production services.

>  we've had a few instances where exchange has just
> stopped talking to active directory because of updates. The time
> required to manage the server is negligible, however when something goes
> wrong it can take days to figure out what has gone wrong and how it has
> gone wrong, and once you've determined that you sometimes can't get your
> head in under the hood to see whats broken. If you get a virus on it,
> forget your entire network! Reinstall is the only way to go, and even a
> microsoft products guy said that so its not just zealotry saying that.

Can't argue with any of that :)

> I think linux is the only way, but there are problems with it to list
> but a few:
> 
>   * Directory management software, we need something for ldap like AD
>   * Inter connectivity of services, we need an end to end, ldap & nis &
> yp->samba & nfs->mail (all servers)->client connectivity
>   * Session password management and single sign on.
>   * Wine needs improvement, and it needs to become internet connective
> for application installation requirements, which is why I'm writing
> http://www.qdh.org.uk/wine-doors.trac as a replacement to winetools.
>   * The X server needs to have some convergence of technology now, Xgl
> is great, but Aiglx and Xegl are better, its a shame that neither work
> properly at present (nvidia/ati users are locked out for the mean time).
>   * The resource usage needs to be fixed, gnome/kde are memory hungry
> and a kernel level garbage collector needs to be considered. OSX has
> this, and memory usage is very good.
>   * The performance issues in general, there are some terrible sections
> of code which are responsible for slow performance in many areas.
>   * The boot time/login time needs to be brought down, fair enough linux
> does a great job in that once you log in, its all there ready to use, as
> opposed to windows where you wait five minutes for it to calm down, but
> it still needs to be optimized. 
> 
> All that said, it still kicks the arse of any other OS out there, and
> that is because of choice, and open standards and open code. I think as
> we're all linux users we'd all agree on that.

My biggest gripe about Linux, and I have a few, is the lack of effective
open source Enterprise management tools.  While some things exist (to
some extent) the priority is always on individual server management
rather than Enterprise.

Stu

-- 
Stuart Buckland <stuart at nightime.org.uk>