A Linux Admin's Guide to Windows?

Rexburg asks: "I recently took a job managing an all Windows network. While my knowledge of the OS is enough to perform the functions of my job, I want to have my bases covered. Naturally, I began the hunt for documentation, but all I can find are books to help Windows users/admins understand and use Linux. I need the opposite. Can the Slashdot crowd point a fellow OSS-head in the right direction?"

Comments

Hmm...

[Coyote67]

No

Ooooooh, I know!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Click Start, Help! Look, no man pages or Engrish documentation!

Windows admin?

[Chester K]

I recently took a job managing an all Windows network.

Were they aware that you have no idea what you're doing when they hired you?

Re:Windows admin?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is different from an MCSE how?

Oh yeah, there's a chance he knows how computers & networks work, not just how to use version x.yy of the config wizard.

A Suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bible, but it looks like you have already sold your soul to Satan.

point a fellow OSS-head in the right direction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the door?

Dude, this transition is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just pretend that FisherPrice or Hasbro or Mattel rewrote UNIX for 5 year olds. That's all windows is. When you start thinking of it as a pretty, underpowered version of UNIX for "special" people, it's very easy to use.

Re:Search MSN

[Anonymous Coward]

I clicked on the the third result, but when the page came up, it crashed my browser. I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry.

Re:There are these cd's I see on TV at 3am

[Sevn]

Yup. I do all my posting on a web enabled phone. :). You are the first AC that actually figured it
out in 3 years. I'm not even kidding.

Re:Uh... Oh....

[KevMar]

Atleast your users know what ICQ is. If my users dont see the shortcut on the desktop, the program is not installed. They wont even check the start menu . . . its an instant phone call.

Short summary

[leonbrooks]

I've seen the Bible (0.75 megawords) summarised as "In the end, God wins"; I think a book teaching Linux admins how to admin MS-Windows could be summarised much more quickly: "Don't".

A slightly longer summary would have a subtitle "How to run for your life in order to stand still" and an overview like this:

Stuff changes by itself, you're running the security equivalent of a black colander (leaky and the holes are really obvious), everything costs heaps and much of it still doesn't work. If you're hoping to escape the command line, be prepared to at least RegEdit regularly if not hit CMD.EXE more than once a week. If you want to understand how something works, buy a book on it and bear in mind that it will have changed since the book will written. If the drivers for something are broken, stiff bikkies. Microsoft will be running the system directly soon, putting out of a job (since that will screw things up so totally at least twice that the site will switch to Linux out of self-defense anyway). It is very point-and-click but the letters on the front are neither warm nor friendly [ever actually read a EULA] and they left the first and most important word ("don't") off.

The actual content will say:

Reboot it. If that doesn't fix the problem, install the latest upgrades. If still no go, reboot from a write-protected floppy and format every hard disk, then reinstall everything. If that doesn't fix it, install the latest upgrades again. Still sad? Then PANIC!

Laugh!

[leonbrooks]

when the page came up, it crashed my browser. I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry.

Laugh! If you start crying at what Microsoft says and does, you'll never stop.\

(-: The page was probably trying to install an ActiveX wizard to do the changeover for you, and assumed you were using Exploder :-)