Air Force Orders Up A Custom Windows Monoculture

Soulfader writes "It seems that the Air Force has not learned from the Navy's folly in single-source mammoth contracts and their attendant problems, and is now working on something similar with Dell and Microsoft. Particularly interesting is the article's assertion that the Air Force is 'fed up' with Microsoft OS problems--but not enough to switch to something else. Instead, they're going to be getting a custom 'solution' of Windows products specially configured for their use. Is this the ever-hoped-for 'good' version of Windows, or more along the line of the sucks-in-new-and-interesting-ways version of Highlander II?"

Comments

What's wrong with OS X?

[sockonafish]

The FBI uses OS X, why won't the military consider it?

And no, it's not because of the don't ask don't tell policy.

Re:What's wrong with OS X?

[Linuxathome]

I've always thought that Linux evangelists should advocate the Windows user to buy Macs. If users who switch at all wanted to learn *nix, they could always crack open the terminal application and learn a few commandline commands and shell scripting techniques to make their Mac experience all the more useful and efficient. Then after they become more adept at *nix in general, the migration to Linux is easy (that is, if they want to give up the niceties of Mac OS X :). For example, how many of us Windows users wanted to be able to send email without the need to setup SMTP settings in Outlook or Netscape mail -- thus avoiding the terrible restrictions our ISPs have on email transport? Mac users have it easy, they can easily enable sendmail in their systems, since sendmail is packaged but inactive in the standard Mac OS X system.

Was mentioned on CNET and ZDNET on 11/19/2004

[antdude]

CNET News.com and ZDNet.

"The Air Force is consolidating its 38 software contracts and nine support contracts with Microsoft into two all-encompassing, agencywide agreements, according to a statement seen by CNET News.com.

The contract, done in conjunction with Dell, will call for the installation and configuration of software as well as ongoing maintenance and upgrades. The deal, which includes 525,000 licenses of Microsoft's Windows and Office, is valued at $500 million over six years, according to Microsoft."

Posted this on my AQFL Web site and even submitted to /. (rejected) on 11/19/2004.

SELinux?

[nocotigo]

Why the hell did the U.S. government even bother with SELinux if they won't use it?

Re:SELinux?

[Coryoth]

Head over the the NSA and read some of their papers about SELinux, and what it was intended for. It was not intended to be the ultimate secure OS. If you read between the lines, its mre like a bunch of NSA people got so pissed off with the current complete lack of security in commercially available OSs, so grabbed Linux and hacked in Mandatory Access Controls without any real difficulty and turned it back to the community as a demonstration to say "See, it isn't so damn hard to make things a lot more secure".

I wouldn't make any bets as to whether the NSA themselves make a lot of use of SELinux. They won't really tell you what they use. They do certainly know alot about writing secure OS code though, considering how fast they managed to put SELinux together.

Random fact: The NSA web site has never been hacked or defaced. The CIA, FBI, the White House etc. have all been hacked, even if it is rarely and briefly. The NSA... never. You can't tell me it's for lack of trying.

Jedidiah.

Re:SELinux?

[moosesocks]

Wow. If the design of their website doesn't give you a 'Big-brother' impression, nothing will.

Seriously... are they GLOATING at the fact that they're an agency which literally nobody knows what they're doing.

Heck, I remember reading somewhere that during WWII, the mere existance of the British equivilant to the NSA was known of by somewhere along the liens of two or three people outside of the agency itself -- Churchill was one of them.

Re:Such BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of software isn't the only factor - management and maintenance of the software costs way more than initial aquisition cost.

Linux, quite simply, blows in a managed environment.

Active Directory Group Policies, WMI, systems management server (inventory, software distribution, remote control), Operating System Deployment Feature Pack, MOM for the servers... management tools.

Oh, and they all work together, with relative ease.

I'm by no means an MS aplogist, but the Linux crowd has a long way to go before I can take them seriously enough to deploy on the 2500 desktops I am responsible for - and the 20K desktops that are in our entire enterprise.

Linux works great on the server - we have 'em all over. But it would be more practical for us to switch to Mac OSX than Linux on the desktop. And that ain't gonna happen either as we have really good pricing (as does the Air Force and Navy) via our enterprise agreements. All that stuff I quoted above - bundled in as part of our EA - the whole package. It really does work well together and makes managing my 2500 desktops quite nice.

Set up in a managed enterprise environment, windows is a stable and capable performer with lower cost of integration than any other platform out there. Might change someday, but not today.

So, when the armchair slashdot quarterbacks out there are really responsible for 2500 desktops and have their job hinging on their ability to carry out the organizations core mission instead of half baked IT experiments, then I'll be listening. Show me the tools, show me they work and I'll consider it - I enjoy the hell out of tweaking our MS sales rep - I would love nothing more than to have a real stick to hit him with instead of a bunch of trash talking on an "advocacy" web site...