[Sussex] Appology / continuation

[Neil Ford]

On 13 Feb 2003 00:33:55 +0000, Geoff Teale wrote:
> 2\  Given a new network installation (i.e. as of today) I truely believe
> that you would be hard pushed to favour windows 2000 as a file,print or
> web server above an Open Source solution.  If there were a very good
> reason for a particular user to pick these options I would, of course,
> concur, but generally it is my experience that most people who make
> these kind of decisions do so because they either haven't tried the
> software in question or the simply believe that any given product is
> actually better simply because it has the name Microsoft on it's box. 
> In short, I will accept any ration reason for using this software
> (though I can see few other than "we're already using it") but I will
> always be annoyed by pig-headedness of ignorance - I do not mean to
> offend anyone by saying that, but I _do_ believe it.  
> 
> I have heard people cite training costs, and staff "not understanding". 
> In short, rubbish!  People who learn new skills on the job are not only
> happier in their work, but they are also more likely to stay with their
> employer in the long term.  People who can't figure out how to set-up
> Samba as opposed to Windows Networking (for example) when provided with
> a decent book and/or access to at least one knowledgable team member are
> not people with the required skills to do their job.  I'm sorry but
> there it is.  Any skills a personalready has _must_ have been acquired
> somewhere and 99% of them apply to both LINUX and Windows.

Unfortunately Samba does not properly support Active Directory and in a 
big installation of Windows 2000/XP desktops, this can be a big issue. 
Yes, you can use Win2K for the directory services and Samba for the 
file serving, but interoperability is not guaranteed and if you start 
to experience problems it's going to be Samba that's going to go.

Having worked in environments where we were looking after thousands of 
users, the facilities that are provided for managing users *are* 
important.

In smaller environments where these kind of things are not an issue, 
then yes, using Windows over Samba makes far less sense.

Neil.