Poll of sorts-

[Joe]

I've been interested in Unix ever since I started learning C from 
Thompson & Ritchie's books (long ago).  For a long time, I was the 
chief, cook, and bottle washer on a Unix System III at a bank.  Now, I'm 
trying tenaciously to be an end user ;)  I have Mandrake 9.1 (still rc2 
because I think I'll screw things up if I upgrade myself.) and because, 
aside from a few font manager crashes, it works.  I do web surfing, 
email, a bit of shell programming and some writing.  I dual boot Win 98, 
but only for small specialty software packages that I don't use 
frequently.  If I ever get around to getting a replacement for this old 
clunker, I'll use VMware because I need Dragon voice software and I'm 
totally hooked on Maximizer contact manager.  I have no idea what distro 
I'll use.  It just has to work with pilot-link.

Joe

Cyber Source wrote:

> Dave Yearke wrote:
>
>>> I'm curious about something--
>>>
>>> How do you all use Linux? Are there many people on the list that use 
>>> it in a
>>> corporate/enterprise environment or is it more for desktop/home use?
>>>   
>>
>>
>> We use it widely here in UB's Science and Engineering Node. We have 
>> several large labs of Linux workstations, plus several 
>> moderately-sized compute clusters. We don't have very many Linux 
>> servers at present; our servers tend to still be mostly Sun 
>> Enterprise systems running Solaris, as they have proven to be stable 
>> and robust (some are almost seven years old, and still performing 
>> their jobs adequately). Another person on the NFLUG list, Jason 
>> Lasker, has built a full KickStart infrastructure, so we can install 
>> and upgrade systems quickly, efficiently, and consistently, and has 
>> customized RHEL3 in many clever ways to meet our particular needs. 
>> I've done quite a bit with hands-off and networked-based 
>> administration, using home-brewed scripts and utilities, and active 
>> maintenance on these systems is pretty low.
>>
>> Truthfully, our client/server environment has illuminated, at least 
>> to me, one of the few weaknesses of Linux: Some network services are 
>> not as well-developed as they are on other Unix-like operating 
>> systems. For example, the Linux automounter does not support direct 
>> mounts well or host-based mounts at all, and other network services 
>> will spontaneously stop responding. I suspect that this is because 
>> the focus of Linux development has been either on (a) standalone 
>> desktop systems, or (b) standalone servers doing things like serving 
>> web sites. I could be completely wrong, here, but that's my guess.
>>
>>  
>>
>>> I've only been to a couple of meetings, but they seem to center more 
>>> around
>>> 'Linux as a Windows desktop replacement', which is great since 
>>> Windows sucks,
>>> but I'd like to see more meeting topics revolving around things like
>>> high-volume system administration, tuning for performance and 
>>> uptime, and
>>> Linux in the enterprise. Anybody else that would like to do things 
>>> like this?
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Jason and I would be happy to demonstrate some of the procedures and 
>> practices we use. We won't claim that they are necessarily the "best" 
>> ways, but they work well for us. Sometimes, we use surprisingly 
>> low-tech approaches to administration, because often times simple is 
>> better.
>>
>> By the way, I guess I'm _way_ in the minority on this list, but I 
>> don't think Windows "sucks" (please understand, I'm not singling you 
>> out, but I see a lot of comments like this on this list). I've been 
>> using and administering it for years, and despite its problems, it 
>> meets certain needs very well. In fact, we have a strong focus here 
>> on making Linux, Solaris, Windows, MacOS, and other operating systems 
>> play nice together, because they all meet certain needs and 
>> accomplish certain goals. We'd be happy to provide examples on some 
>> of this as well, if there's interest. For the last few months, for 
>> example, I've been using Cygwin on my Windows XP laptop, which gives 
>> a full Unix-like environment under Windows, complete with a full X 
>> Window environment (and GNOME on the way).
>>
>>  
>>
> I gotta chime in on the "windows sucks" thing, and this is just a 
> general observation, not directed at you specifically.
> I think I can safely speak for a few people that the term "windows 
> sucks" can and does mean way more that the operating system itself.
> I myself try not to use such generalizations but I have, in my 
> frustration of "trying to make different os's play nice", been know to 
> blurt out such things, as well as a few expletives, lol. And it's 
> ALWAYS the attitude and resulting products of M$ that manage to 
> purposely not play nice.
> As a publicly traded company, M$ has an obligation to earn a profit 
> but the methods are certainly questionable, I don't need to go on 
> about this, you all know this.
> I just wanted to point out the practices of another publicly traded 
> company, RedHat. How ingenious was there Fedora project and concept?! 
> They too have an obligation to earn a profit for there share holders 
> and with a public beta like Fedora, they can use the public at large 
> to put new ideas and code to test, pulling out proven methods for 
> there sold software. If you want something polished, you pay for it 
> and they back it up with support.
> Fedora is now always between the top 2 Linux distros and is a great 
> distro to stay on top of the newest stuff.
> Someday someone will come up with a way to use copyrights in the 21st 
> century on music, etc., they old ways no longer apply, i.e. the days 
> of col parkers are over.
> I see RedHat as taking a huge stride forward in the way software is 
> dealt with in the 21st century, I think it will be a model to follow, 
> we'll see.
> Just my 2cents..
>

-- 
"Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool" --Plato