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@Steven Hewittt:
This is so much BS. I am no Linux fanboy, but I am a linux user sice 97.
I used it first for my nat/firewall/server. Was nice, you had managed distros which made the install a breeze, which it was NOT on any windows flavor at the time.
For my windows machines, at the time, I had a 95, I was quite a gamer, I used a bit visual studio 6, and it was about OK. had 98, 2000 workstation, XP
2000 workstation was the bes one IMHO, was relatively stable, very lightweight, worjing like a breeze. Only problem wasthe lack of support for game/Multimedia and taht at that pooint linux was doing that for me, and that all distro had a package management system which allowed to have application faster from a safe source and directly integrated in the system.
At some point in 98 I installed a slackware, which i did not like to much, and didmanage with my very little experience to get it running, X, some apps, ... veryinterestign but not fitting my needs, Quake 2 support was a bit low, I passed.
Then I started having a less game aoriented use of machines around 2000; and Linux/Debian became my faithful friend. emacs then vim, gcc, full shell capabilities, simple configuration (yes click and pray is something I hate)
At that point I had 4 machines running, and I could not be bothered to have an homegenous farm, so I continued to have mixed windows, Linux, even some Open BSD at some point. I am now thinking about some solaris x86 to be put on the old dual P2 motherboards I scavenged.
The point being that, since 2000, each and every time a Linux/BSD machine went down, I felt compelled to repair/replace it. Each and every time a windows machine goes down, it is stripped for parts and never replaced. nowdays only have a windows machine left, and that is only because I cannot be bothered to install a linux on it (which would be 40 minutes somehow)
What is the value of an OS that does not even have a proper file system management. And for all the user groups and things, I do believe that this is a simple copy of very old unix technology. I am not a windows specialist
But is it not something like
Active Directory = LDAP if Iremember well?
DNS ... well DNS has been on unixes for soooo long
Group policies : Uhuh, did I miss something, I believe that the concept of groups have been there on unixes sice before fire was invented.
I might be off the point here, I have not seen a windows server since I stopped working as a techy in corparate and institutional machines parks as summer job.
Exel spreadsheets are a joke, and should be discouraged at all cost. I have seen some guys using exel spreadsheets whith very small fields to do some graphic rendering. Well, doesn't it say it all.
And honestly, for offcial documents, there is no better output than a latex compiled document.
And I did work with IIS/Oracle/Asp and I was really happy to leave after finishing the mission (10 weeks), any more would have lead me to a painful death.
My current project manager has created a linux distro that is able to install trough network and boot fresh in less than 30 seconds and it is able to cope with heterogeneous hardware. It is using some semi permanent NFS cache to do that. It is used on 500 + machines and have shown so reliable that even the institutions servers are using this system : if the server crashes it gets a full reinstall in some minutes (for availability reasons, servers do not used the NFS cached install and need to download binaries)
I have never seen that with windows networks, where it was either a ghost and a full disk image for each kind of machines, or a recovery disk with streamlined installation.