Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
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...