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30 Years a Sysadmin
itwbennett writes: Sandra Henry-Stocker's love affair with Unix started in the early 1980s when she 'was quickly enamored of the command line and how much [she] could get done using pipes and commands like grep.' Back then, she was working on a Zilog minicomputer, a system, she recalls, that was 'about this size of a dorm refrigerator'. Over the intervening years, a lot has changed, not just about the technology, but about the job itself. 'We might be 'just' doing systems administration, but that role has moved heavily into managing security, controlling access to a wide range of resources, analyzing network traffic, scrutinizing log files, and fixing the chinks on our cyber armor,' writes Henry-Stocker. What hasn't changed? Systems administration remains a largely thankless role with little room for career advancement, albeit one that she is quick to note is 'seldom boring' and 'reasonably' well-paid. And while 30 years might not be a world's record, it's pretty far along the bell curve; have you been at it longer?
I have a friend who had a 4 year old Mac laptop. He was big into recording his own music with ProTools. When he got a new iPhone 6, iTunes wouldn't work with it. He was instructed to upgrade Mac O/S, which did get his iTunes working but then broke ProTools. 4 years of recording work was lost unless he purchased a new ProTools license.
Another friend had a Mac Laptop old enough that she couldn't upgrade it to the current rev of Mac O/S. When she purchased a new Airport Express, the version of the Airport Utility on her laptop wasn't compatible. She had to borrow an iPad from a friend to manage the Airport Express, which is just a home router. Every other home router on the planet is managed through a web browser GUI, but Apple makes you use their proprietary utility and that's how it is with everything Apple. It's all proprietary and you pay through the nose for it.
I run a hi-end audio system at home and for a music server, I have a 10 year old Intel laptop running Ubuntu using the free, open source Banshee music server/manager. Nobody leaves my home without envy after hearing my rig. Linux software works fine on older gear and doesn't obsolete itself the way Apple products do.