[ILUG] Linux not good enough......

[Bryan O'Donoghue]

olearypj at rte.ie wrote:
> I had an interesting run in with a "senior IT manager" in the job today, he was 
> setting up a server & some clients for a demo of some help desk software on 
> monday. I asked if he had seen OTRS & he replied that he had not even heard of 
> it but would bet that it would only run on Linux I suppose. I explained that it 
> runs very well under Linux in Beaumont Hospital, but he replied that it may 
> very well do, but the job he has for his software was too big & important for 
> such a simple package & besides that OTRS thing, being open source would have 
> no support or backup. How do you answer that kind of comment.
> BTW, I can't believe that i'm able to write this email without having to reboot 
> this nt4 pc for the 14th time today!!!!!
> 
> Pat.


Maybe start by pointing out the that 'support' is quite limited, with a Windows 
machine.
The give examples of how 'support' by and large entails paying for updates to 
broken software quite frequently.

Move on to point out that at the end of the day something like 9x% of issues 
with a box, end up being sorted out by the System Administrator onsite.

You should then point out that while his <=10 pc project might seem big to him, 
that (n) Commerical render farms run linux, x% of the super clusters in the 
world run Linux and that to suggest that a Windows box, could ever bring that 
sort of performance, scability or reliability is nonsense.

Point out that if you are so inclined you *can* buy support for many Unix products.

Drop a little anecdote like this one I posted on boards.ie

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=1604038#post1604038

Basically what your senior IT has done, is found some excuse... any excuse to 
backup a decision he already made. You'd probably want to question what level 
of *actual* support there is for the products he is installing?
Quite a low level I'd venture. As the link above proves, even organisations 
with bags of money, frequently make a complete <censored> out things.

For example, if he's using SQLServer, it's probably quite likely he has *no* 
support bought for it, real world.

You can buy support for MySQL. You can buy updates for Red Hat.
How is that any *less* support then buying support for SQLServer and the 
automagic updates in Windows?

Basically you point out that he's totally wrong when he's says there's no support.
There is, you want it, you go and pay for it.

In the mean time the Sysadmin for the Windows box, has to install a new patch 
every two weeks to fix a hole some worm would exploit, whereas the Linux box, 
most likely needs a patch like that... <=once in a blue moon.



-- 
Bryan O'Donoghue
Embedded Software Engineer

Europlex Technologies Ltd
Clonshaugh Business & Technology Park
Dublin 17
Ireland

T:+353 (0) 1 2500500
F:+353 (0) 1 2500590
E:bryano at euoplex.ie
W:www.europlex.ie