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Ease of Use vs. Sweat Equity
Kelly McNeill pointed us over to a new article: "Browsing through ZDNet's feedback a while back, I lighted on the now standard debate on the merits of Linux and related Operating Systems versus those of Microsoft Windows NT. One thing eventually got me thinking. In every posting that claimed success with using NT, the factor that was claimed as guaranteeing success, was never NT's 'superior' technology, which has been Microsoft's line all along, but instead the time spent in doing things right. In other words, the reason why some companies could claim success with their deployment of NT was good old elbow-grease/sweat equity. "
I'm the sysadmin in a cybercafé, and consequently I regularly have to explain the use of the computers to people who've never used a computer before in their lives. This explanation can even be as basic as 'watch the arrow on the screen. when you move the mouse up...'
All the public machine use W9x (people need games and MS Word), and all the servers are Linux. I'm looking at putting a few Linux machines out for the masses to use becuase if you've never used a computer before Windows isn't easy to learn The web integration in 98 just makes things worse.
To be fair, Linux is almost as difficult. But for the absolute neophyte, I'd rather spend time showing them how to use Linux than have to go back time and again to explain what happens when the screen goes all blue.
From what we have found just removing the necessity to use a mouse to run any application, from database management tools, to FTP clients is enough to slow us down such that we are faster under linux. Not to mention that we can code a web app in perl with mysql way faster than VBScript and SQL, that may be because we are more used to it, but somehow I doubt that. Not to mention the fact that we are more used to it, because it was easier to learn 3 years ago (and was around for cheap) than to pick up related MS technology. As to the "battle" between M$ and Linux, I think that high bandwidth is the only weapon that will effectively make Linux succeed. As high bandwidth becomes very widely accessible (no pun intended) people will want to run their own ftp servers, mail servers, web servers, dns, etc. This will increase the call for stable, reliable services at home that run constantly. ANd combined with this need is the low cost necessity. Why pay $5000 for hardware and software (IIS, SQL, NT, etc.) when you can get it all free for Linux, chalk up a $1000 server system and get ready to roll.......We need high bandwidth! (not to mention I wnat to be able to download an mp3 in less than 45 minutes at home :-)
Funny and I thought Perl == Paid employment recently located
This reminds me of the early days, with the debate about Mac vs. PC. Sure, a Mac was easy to use, but it was harder to get at the guts of the computer/operating system.
Sound familiar?
Mike Eckardt meckardt@yahoo.spam.com
- On the up side, that scares away the ludicrously incompetent
- Also on the up side, the expectation of difficulty/complexity means that people expect there to be some difficulty in figuring things out.
In contrast, those that expect hugs and kisses and simplicity because they're deploying NT run into opposite problems:When the situation (e.g. - independent of the OS in place) happens to be difficult/complex, this then doesn't phaze anybody, as they were prepared for there to be some difficulty.
As for the author's efforts at writing science fiction, it sounds like a case where you hope many of his neighbours are MSFT-critters, so that if his characters come for a meal, few will feel worried about it...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I agree. Any OS can be -made- to do what you want, with enough time and effort. The question is not what you can do (which, according to Turing, was anything you liked that was computable), but how practical it is, and how much effort is involved.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Of course, the background says that he's a Linux user, and "once tried to install a beta of Windows NT 3.51, but encountered a BSOD." Thus, his opinion is about as biased as any opinion voiced here.
Be that as it may, it was very clever for him to point out that Microsoft counts "X number of licenses purchased, ergo X number of licenses used" as a source of inflated Microsoft claims.
I don't think that this article will change any PHB's opinions vis-a-vis Linux vs Microsoft, but it is heartening to see such articles written that contain substance and not as much diatribe.
"All in all, I give it two thumbs up."
"All in all, I give Microsoft one finger up."
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
It seems to me that there are 2 kinds of company, and 2 types of IT depts.
Managers make the decisions about hardware/software and other business decisions and very often they are not in the 'know' about the arguments between opensource and closed source. They see a product that does 80% of what they want, and they will buy it because they *know* it will do what it says on the tin. They expect no more.
This is a standard thing, unless managers relinquish at least some of the responsibility to those in the 'know', then it's the way it stays.
To a non technical manager, paying $50,000 for a system that will do exactly what it says for minimal hassle then it's very tempting. Much more of a sure fire thing than spending half that on something which has the potential, but needs developing.
NT does to a greater or lesser extent do exactly what it says, as do the products that run on it. No they aren't great, and you can't always adapt them at all *because* they are proprietary, but most people (read managers) will settle for this.
That's why NT is here to stay.
The term ease of use is something of a misnomer when applied to WinNT, what it should be is ease of learning. WinNT has a much lower learning curve than that of Unix, but once you reach a certain level of proficiency in both, you will actually find that many tasks are far easier under a unix system.
;)
The problem is, of course, remembering the right incantations and understanding what they actually do, rather than clicking a few buttons, selecting some radio-buttons and then rebooting.
What it comes down to really, is what you class as 'ease of use'. I find Unix much more natural to use than NT, but I'm a bit of a masochist when it comes to computers -- if it doesn't hurt you aren't doing it right
--
Sounds to me as if people were saying, "We bought this big, fancy luxury car -- NT. We've spent so much money on it at the local garage, just getting it to the point where we can actually drive the thing, that now that we can drive it, we going to drive it until the end of time!
In more corporate terms: "We in the I/T department have invested so much time and money in NT that if we just dumped it for Linux, we would look like idiots. After all, who would pour so much money into a product when a better (and free!) alternative exists? So, we're going to drive NT until the end of time!"
Cheers,
Tom
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
A) If NT was all it's cracked up to be, that is delivered a business EXPEDIENCY to set up servers and workstations quickly and flexibly - I'd love it. If we could just buy the licenses and go thru a simple setup and it actually worked it'd be a dream come true. And some of it does, setting up printers and disks is usually quite painless.
B) BUT, if I have to spend hours grepping thru MSFT 'TechNet', smoozing with other McSE's trying to find out which registry edit needs to be done to get some tricky config running and workaround for this bug and that glitch and some other 'issue' then FAGHITABOUTIT. I'd rather spend the time to learn the gory details of some open industry standard system any day than what BG's favorite color or domain/directory scheme of the month is.
Bottom line - if it works (and so far it's usually embarrasing) I'd recommend it. If it takes learning something I'd rather use *nix.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I quite agree with the conclusion that successful NT implementations rely on elbow grease. I've done a few in my time.
And I've seen the way that management at big companies work. Once thay've decided on a "project" they pour resources into it like there's no tomorrow. You know, hire a few more NT sysadmins for good measure. Deploy random product X to a thousand machines because it's the flavour of the month.
Linux needs to get into the position where the same amount of resources get thrown at it. This is a big task, and it needs a concerted effort on the part of the open source community. Most corporations have a "better the devil you know" mentality, so some serious PR work needs to be done.
My number one hint:
Get a consortium of Linux consultants to put together a "showcase" 100% Linux enterprise system. Linux servers, email, e-commerce, intranet, security and desktops. Put up a top quality website showing how it was all done, the hardware chosen, the software used and the configuration steps taken.
This will give Linux some serious credibility. As a bonus, the partners in the venture will make a mint by helping out with implementations for companies that want a similar system. And it will show the commercial viability of supporting Linux to everyone else.
I've not had good success with NT. One server install is about 3 months behind schedule because of strange software configuration problems. Our other NT server is a nightmare to keep running.
The guys working on this are Microsoft certified.
The Unix and VMS installs I've done have gone without too much of a hitch. Hardware and software is easy to configure and install. Most things are picked up automatically, and if a bit of hardware is not quite up to spec it still runs.
We've had problems with NT because the new memory wasn't something NT knew about and it didn't like it and refused to use it - in Win 95 and Linux it worked fine. Same thing with a tape unit - I had to do a firmware upgrade on a tape unit before NT could be forced to use the damned thing.
NT is waaaay too choosy about the hardware it uses. its too choosy about the service packs it needs.
No other system I know causes as much sweat as NT.
My house mate and myself have our rooms networked (the builders put 12 wires to each phone jack!) and all was good. About a month ago, we got DSL installed in the apartment. Now, we used to share a phone line for our dialup access (we had two different ISPs), and sharing a single 56K modem can be painful, so we never did connection sharing. With the DSL, however, we needed an internet connection sharing (masquerading) solution. So, I pulled out a dusty old 486DX2/50 (16MB) and started to experiment with connection sharing.
Unfortunately, one of the two NICs in the machine (a 3C507) never quite worked well under Linux in this box, so I figured I'd go buy another NE2000. In the meantime, however, my house mate (a Win98 user) decided that we should throw Win98 with internet connection sharing on the machine to get it going for now. Blasphemy, but I was interested anyway.
I spent all afternoon with that darn box trying to get Win98 to work on it. Granted a lot of problems were due to the old hardware (Win98 required a minimum of 66MHz := chip swap, Old SoundBlaster CD-ROM := driver hunt), but in the end the GUI didn't make things any easier, just prettier. I didn't need to configure chains or anything, but it still was tricky.
A week or so ago, I finally got another NE2000 and installed it in the box along with Linux. Since I haven't done MASQ before, I had to do some reading, but I got it done in the end. Works just fine now.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I had just as much work involved in getting a Windows box to do the masquerading job as I did with Linux. Granted once you've learned everything it's a breeze, but administrators are always learning how to do things. Yes, Win98 is a nice GUI and UNIX is command line, but it takes just as much to know that you open this control panel and click on this and check that to get a job done as it does to know that you edit rc.local and call ipchains.
Now what I'd really like to point out is the fact that I'm MUCH happier with the job that Linux is doing than Win98 was. The connection is faster, the machine has more resources available, and on top of all that, I can access the box from the outside world (I used VNC for Win98, BTW). While I had to reboot the Win98 box at least once every few days, the Linux box has been running without a hitch since I installed it.
It takes time for either Windows or UNIX. The end result, however, is that UNIX is just plain better; and that is from experience.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Authors background:- --------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
Wesley Parish is a Linux user, and also plays around with Minix. He once tried to install a beta of Windows NT 3.51, but encountered a BSOD. He is still working on his anthropological SF novel, and has decided he would never invite his characters around for a meal, as they would eat the neighbors' dogs. Not such a bad idea, but if his neighbors came over to complain, his characters would eat his neighbors...
Translation: Wesley Parish is a college student studying computer science. He has never run the operating system he is criticising, nor has he even made the effort to obtain a retail copy of that software so that he might validate his journalistic credibility.
Please people, I realize this article is somewhat more rambling and pointless than most, but isn't it a little inappropriate to give a public forum to someone who self-confessedly doesn't know what he's talking about?
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I think the article makes some very interesting points. However, one thing I have found that is uniform with people who claim success with NT is an aggressively restrictive attitude towards what users are allowed to do.
Arguably, this must be true of any successful widely deployed solution. Since most people don't have the disposition or training to be an effective system admin, then they should be locked out of certain administrative functions. On the other hand, the standard policies of IT departments seems to be almost draconically restrictive -- for example no user installed applications (of course these days they should probably count any file with a ".doc" extension as as a user installed application).
This seems almost like a 19th century attitude towards workers -- like central planning or Taylor's discredited "Scientific Management" theories. Speaking as a former MIS director, I feel that users should on one hand not be required or in many cases allowed to perform many administrative functions, but on the other hand they should be free to customize their toolsets. It makes no sense to call somebody as "knowledge worker" and then dictate how they will do their work. A modicum of chaos is a healthy aspect of any complex adaptive system (e.g. an enterprise).
An ideal OS would provide a customizable mix of control and freedom. But both the control and freedom need to be targeted at freeing users to be as effective as possible. Maybe its just my personal disposition, but users of a system should feel free rather than restricted. What I question is whether an NT deployment can be both manageable and provide this sense of user empowerment.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Recently I took a position as an analyst in a NT Server group... (a server admin by another title). I figured I could pick things up pretty quickly... My experience is pretty well rounded, including some previous NT experience. And Linux has been a hobby for a while now. After all, if I can pick up Linux, NT should be no sweat, right?
Hah!
It seems they start on opposite ends of the spectrum. Linux is stable by default, and you've got to pretty well screw it up to make it unstable. NT starts unstable, and you've got to add hotfixes and tweaks and service packs to make it stable. Then it's nice and stable... until you install another application.
Now, every day little tasks might actually be easier in NT than Linux... but troubleshooting is so much easier (and less necessary) in Linux than NT. Linux usually gives me a clue what the problem is. NT often gives a generic error, and leaves no trace of what the problem actually is.
Despite being a relative newbie to Linux, Linux has never left me scratching my head, completely clueless the way NT frequently does. Sometimes it seem like NT ought to have a "I just didn't feel like it" error.
NT is easier to use like an automatic transmission is easier to use than a manual.
Sure, you may not have to do as much, but you've
got less control, less flexibility, and you're never REALLY sure what's going on in there...
Jase
Easy of use definiteley is a relative term. I would say that ease of use is largely a factor of what you're used to. I learned UNIX first and find it (for most things) very straight forward to use. It took me a while to get used to Windows, but I feel that the Windows GUI has many annoying features that seriously make me question it's ease of use (for example: who ever came up with the notion that an active window should automatically be placed on top of the desktop, thus covering up everything else. That 'feature' just drives me nuts ...)
...
...
Also, when something breaks and all you can do is click 'OK' and 'Cancel', the so-called ease of use starts to feel like a curse from hell. Microsoft has been very good at touting their ease of use, but this is only half the truth. I equate their ease of use with 'limiting my options'; something I'm not interested in when using a computer
I think the best feature of the whole MS platform is the integration they provide: you can pretty much select any object and paste it into another application. That's pretty cool. Unfortunateley most other MS things I see, are like toys. Very nice looking but lacking in depth and flexibility
I've allways had the impression that windows is in fact difficult. Things are either stupid or a hack. The documentation is bad when at all present.
Unix is configurable, has well defined layers, tons of documentation and if you have linux, you can look at the code. It might be more dificult to learn, but once you have learned it you can do more in less time and more easily.
Somehow the idea got widespread that computers should be easy to use, and it is possible that this myth is going to swamp NT. After all, what do you mean ''system administration for dummies'', ''c++ for dummies''? if you are a dummy keep off.
I don't think computers are easy to use. I like unix because it is honest on that point. On the long run you do not do a favor to serious users if you conceal the difficulties and pretend they are not there.
rm *
Although the article at first appeared well written, I am perplexed at the true thesis of his argument.
...
It seems something like this:
People expect Unix to be difficult, therefore they are more apt to work harder at it and be pleased with their results.
In contrast, people expect Windows NT to be easy and when it gets complicated they are more frustrated and discard the operating system.
The real truth is that Windows NT continues increase its market share despite:
1. Increased attention to Linux in the press
2. The underlying superiority and flexibility of Linux over NT.
The author of the article writes "So it would appear that Windows NT is a victim of Microsoft's considerable marketing muscle, along with OS/2, etc." Maybe I'm slow but I don't get the point. Windows NT, despite its faults is still thriving. OS/2 despite its strengths is yesterdays news.
I'm not advocating Window NT. I use Linux.
The author of the Excellent Article comment made some great points but I'd like to add a new twist. He said that Linux weeded out incompetent system administrators. True. But recognize there is a shortage of qualified and competent IT professionals. Many reasonably competent Windows NT sysadmins simply can't administer a Linux/Unix box. I'm not saying they're not trained, I'm saying they are so used to the window-based hand holding that mucking in the text based configuration files of Linux would blow some sort of fuse. With the shortages of good computer professionals, maybe its a good thing that those with lesser skills can still make a good living as an MCSE. At least for now
Dave
This argument has gone round and round on these message boards for as long as I can remember being here. What's the point? But for the sake of argument...
MAC is to NT as NT is to Linux.
Mac users say to NT users that Mac is "easy to use". NT users say to Mac users, "Yeah, until it breaks, then try and fix it".
NT users say to Linux users that NT is "easy to use". Linux users say to NT users, "Yeah, until it BSOD's, then try and fix it"...
DAMN, I'm out of moderator points....
Could some one moderate this up as "Funny"?
At least I hope Mr. Coward is aware that (Li)/(UN)ix is designed to make it very hard for a process to take down the operating system. And that the entire GUI infrastructure can crash, but every thing else will run... (Granted it _looks_ like a crash but the OS just keeps going and going and going...)
My favortie is the last two lines....
Like windows has a standard GUI.... or drivers that don't take the system down. [Don't try to argue that one, because I've had it happen with win95a and some funky video card.]
Mr. Coward I salute you! You are always so funny.
RobK
Myddrin
When my NT goes blue, the MP3 player starts skipping (playing the last 1/2 second repeatedly).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
No! When I run NT and get the blue screen of death, that's the *operating system* that crashed. I can't kill the problem application and continue. The entire OS is dead and it requires a reboot.
Microsoft loves to blame it all on the application developers - but no matter how poorly they write their app, the OS should not allow the app to clobber the entire system. In Java, everything runs in a "sandbox" so it can't run away and kill the whole system. Why can't NT seem to get this right?
Furthermore, I don't think most of us are trying to claim that Linux would be just as stable as it is today if people ran the same number of apps on it that are out there for NT. The real issue, though, is the frequency of crashes when you run the *same* apps on both platforms. Oracle database ran great on our old OpenVMS VAX, yet on a DEC Alpha running NT, it bombs regularly.
If I put up an ftp server in Linux, it just sits there and runs.... Same for an Apache web server. You do the same tasks on an NT box (say, with IIS for web and their built-in ftp server), and good luck keeping it going more than a month or two, tops.
Sometimes I have to wonder why the OS wars turn into such an emotional debate. Just what is it exactly with this issue that causes people to get "all riled up" (I'm not talking about the Linux zealots and the MS shills who blindly repeat their favorite MS marketing mantra.) I'm wondering about the people who are very grounded and rational, yet who will get into these heated debates which just seem to end up repeating the same old stuff with nothing ever really getting resolved. Benchmarks get quoted, twisted, and sliced and diced. Anecdotes get quoted, documented and debated. But to what end? Has anyone ever changed their opinion after sifting through all of this stuff? Do we ever accomplish anything?
:)
It's almost like we tend to see our choice of our favorite OS as an extension of ourselves, therefore we take up arms and are ready to do battle at any moment. But why? Where does this come from?
Ah well... perhaps I'm feeling a bit to introspective today and I really should get to work. Opps... I just noticed my NT machine has been up for 3 hours... time to reboot it to freshen up the memory a bit
I was impressed that the CD kept playing, even after the BSOD.
That's because almost all CD-ROM drives have standalone audio CD player hardware in them. It's not like MP3, where the host CPU has to be alive to get a sound -- the CD player does all the work.
-lee
Unfortunately, it is exceedingly difficult to find any unbiased voices at /. anymore. With the whole WinNT vs Linux thing, all the posters here have presented anecdotal evidence as to why NT is so much worse than Linux. Very few people come to NT's defense, not because no one suports NT (they sell enough licenses) but because any NT users who might have been here have left.
You see, filled only with pro-Linux zealots, /. becomes little more than a group of the same people patting each other on the back. Very little is accomplished in saying "NT sucks, here's why" without having anyone here to defend it. Yet time after time, when someone jumps to NT - or any non-open source competing product for that matter - invariably they are pounced upon by fellow /.'ers.
It feels like its not really worth airing opposing opinions on this forum anymore. In this mob rule, one's dissenting voice gets lost in the incessant bickering that accomplishes very little. For those of you who have said that NT or whatever is difficult to use, ask yourself ... no, really ask yourself ... where the computer industry is heading and why.
I work for a small state agency where we have three people working in IT. Two people handle the network, servers, and workstations, and I handle the web servers. I manage content, program, handle security, and do a myriad of other tasks to keep my four servers up and running. Two of the web servers run WinNT, the third runs Luinx, as does the Database server. "But why would you run NT, when Linux is clearly superior?" I'll tell you. The linux box has been in this agency since about 95 or so. Its running whatever version of Slackware was out at that time. Its been patched along the way (I hope...), but was the baby of an employee who no longer works here. He didn't leave documentation. One of the two NT servers was also here when I got here and was also the toy of another employee. Which one was easier to take over? I hate to say it, but the NT server was, because it was easier to assess what was installed and what needed to be done with it. The Linux box is sitting there, waiting until I have a solid week or so to go through and see what needs to be done.
NT addrssses a very important issue with the people at my job. Because the IT staff is very small, and the network admin is a NetWare freak while the desktop person knows hardware much better than software, the systems have to easily transfer from one person to the next. I'd be doing a disservice in moving from an NT webserver because the next person they hire will need to quickly assess what they have/what they have to do. Or, because of budget cuts, they don't hire someone, they're going to have to train someone on the basics of how to handle a web server. I can't do that with a Linux box as well as with an NT solution.
Then why a Linux DB? First, it was cheap. Second, the interface for the DB resides on the Linux box. Third, I reason that if the person might as well learn simple linux stuff if they're going to administer a database.
Most of the Linux users out there would rather die than use a GUI to get a job done. They'd much rather perform hand calculations and do everything with a small set of utilities. Whether or not the level of graphical automation has anything to do with the quality of the output is up to speculation. Despite the existance of the Linux command line for the last 9 years industries which only existed in the last 2 years have defaulted to consistantly producing TV shows on graphical interfaces running Win NT.
Either that or they are blind to deficiencies in their setup that will only appear as the setup gets hammered a bit more.
A problem I'm seeing more and more of as linux and nt become more widely used in our environment is that since most users' first experience with both of these OS's was on a home machine, they become extremely lazy in their sysadmin practices.
A sysadmin or developer who may be fairly clueful and careful normally, suddenly becomes a install-happy fool on a redhat or nt box. While previously they would have no problem spending a couple hours reading docs on new package, now suddenly they have no problem just running through the install wizard or installing the rpm, and calling it done.
While this isn't *too* bad on the linux side, because in the back of their mind they know they're being lazy, its devasting on the nt side because for many users, this is the only way of administering an NT box they've ever known. And since it seems to work for them at first only using the wizards, they keep doing it. And they get more comfortable with it, and keep doing it... even if it does catch up with them, and they trash the machine out of ignorance, they just chalk it up to NT's instability, because that's all they read about on slashdot. =)
This sounds ludicrous, perhaps, but how many production NT boxes out there do you still see %systemroot% still with everyone:f? Or how many nt admins give you a blank look when you ask what options permissions they assigned to that new service they just installed? Quite a few, I'm afraid.
NT definitely needs time to mature -- the fact the ms threw away nearly *all* the nt4 mgmt tools shows that even they realize this. But just as important, the sysadmin community needs time to mature with respect to NT and grow more clueful admins. Interns-turned-nt-admins, or unix guys who have a quake machine at home and bought a learn-nt-in-7-minutes book will probably be able to get an nt box installed and most of the services a company may need up and running, but when things go wrong, about all they'll be good for is to fetch the os media and reinstall, complaining about microsoft's evilness the whole time.
There is no replacement for a clueful sysadmin, on any platform. No matter what the little bullet points on the vendors web site say. The fact that NT has alot of vms-ness underneath really should drive this home -- if an admin can't tell an sid from a guid, or gives a blank look when you mention \??, then it's only a matter of time before they get knocked on their butt by this "simple-to-use" os.
Clueful admins aren't grown overnight, and they they don't pop straight out of msce's courses or trade schools, so I don't mean to criticize anyone who's struggling on this platform. But it's very easy platform to gain a false sense of confidence in your knowledge of it.
In my opinion, this is it's most fatal flaw, and this is an excellent article to point it out. Hopefully with microsoft improving the docs and adding obviosuly complex things like active directory to NT more admins will realize how deep they are in over their head and seek out deeper understanding of whats going.
Anyways, that's my rant for the morning. Time to go home and sleep.
-- Scott
I usually stay away from the *nix & holy war but this article is of particular interest due to my observations around the project I am working on. I've been builing a test lab for a large northeast company that offers both the Solaris & NT platforms for web hosting. This lab was to be a replica of the production environment down to the routers / switches used. In building this lab, I had to work with the Unix & NT Web Hosting engineers. During this time, I received awesome exposure to Solaris and Linux (which I was using for the development platform). My learning curve was vertical (I come from a NetWare and NT background). Needless to say, I was stoked at the learning opportunity. Now to my point. Initially, the Solaris builds were tough. I'm a CLI and script guy so the UI wasn't the problem. It was the lack of readily availabe and accurate documentation that was painfull. I can't count the number of contradictory HOWTO's and FAQs that I ran into. However, after working with some of the Unix sysadmins who "knew" their stuff, I "knew" what I needed to look for. I scripted the builds and everything took off from there. When I worked with the NT engineers, it was equally frustrating. The NT build was done through a series of WinInstall packages and PERL scripts. I had to modify the NT build in the lab due to trust dependant security. When I asked for the dependancies, most of the engineers (MCSEs)didn't know what the scripts they were running did! I finally found someone who "knew" (non MCSE)the plumbing of the builds and I was off and running. A platforms ease of use is relative to how much the sysadmin "knows" about it. From my limited experience, *nix requires you to get to "know" it before it is up and running (this is a good thing!). Unfortunatelty, NT allows you to get it up and running without you "knowing" what is going on (NOT a good thing!). If the NT sysadmin "knows" his stuff, it can be a decent and stable platform - as can NetWare and the *nixes etc ... Any worthy sysadmin should know that easy isn't always better - although you shouldn't have to spit blood for everything either!
"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated"
The sudden surge in the internet and especially the web almost drove Microsoft into obsolence. Obviously they did everything to prevent open protocols like SMTP,POP3,http,HTML from becoming successful. They recovered, however, part of the control lost, by distributing IE for free and pushing Netscape out of business. On the server side, however, they have had to concede quite a lot of business to Unix and Linux.
This is, however, not the last time that a new technology will suddenly surge and take over. As we are stretching the applicability of the current internet protocols to its limit and while we are slowly realizing that we will need something new and different to enable e-commerce massively, out there somewhere the next Tim Berners-Lee is writing the next hot thing that will take the world by storm. The next hot thing will not come from Microsoft, IBM, Sun, or any other vendor with an established customer base that they can continue milking. Hot things are more of a threat than an opportunity to these companies. But nonetheless, the next hot thing may eat well into Microsoft's desktop domination well before they have had the opportunity to re-organize and counterattack.
Bill Gates says himself "we are continuously only 2 years away from failure". And I think he's definitely right. But then it also testifies to the fact that he's a damn good player at these games.
I assume you looked at Squid. I may be totally wrong about this here, but here goes (Disclaimer:I have no experience doing this myself. This is my experience seeing other people doing this.)
.doc attachments go here, .exe attachments go | /dev/null, etc. Hope this helps...
I have a friend who is an admin who runs squid to do this very thing (sort of). Here's the deal: he runs squid on a box in front of the mail box. Since squid is a cache proxy, you can (and do) look at everything that passes through it. The mail is directed to the squid box. A few lines of perl look for attachments on the mail. If yes: delete/run as guest/send back/whatever; if no: put in the queue. The mailbox (the one that all of the users get their mail from) runs fetchmail. It wakes up periodically, looks in the queue, and pulls over any new mail. IIRC, you can set it up to deposit the mail on an NT box (if needed) so you can run Norton (or whatever). In this way, the mail is disinfected, the users run Win9X, you run *nix, and everyone is happy.
If you like, you can also use perl to pre-sort and filter the incoming mail:
Jedi Hacker (Apprentice) and Code Poet
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Windows programmers tend to assume that their app is the only one running on the system. This is a direct throw-back to plain DOS days when that was the case. Even in 3.1 and 3.11 you could generally get away with assuming that yours was the only app running (Many more than that and the system would crash.) For that reason, they will very often pop up full screen windows without regard to whatever else you may be doing on the system. OS/2 had some neat options such as "start minimized" that you could select to keep such programs in the background until you were ready for them.
Windows programmers tend to overuse modal and system modal dialogs. Actually, modal and (especially) system modal dialogs are the work of the devil and should never be used. I could not name one application that was written natively in X11 that uses them. I might tolerate a modal dialog in X, but if an app ever popped up a system modal dialog in X, I'd rm it that very instant.
Windows programmers will commit an assortment of other atrocities as well (Again, to be fair, many UNIX programmers will, too) for the full list see http://www.iarchitect.com, which seems to have become a Slashdot favorite since it was carried here a while back.
To summarize, Windows would be a whole lot more usable if someone would take the bad programmers out back and shoot them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The GUI has its benefits and its drawbacks. I used to have an OS/2 rexx program that would change all the icons on your desktop to the same image. Run that and then click "Arrange" and watch someone try to work with the system. It ain't pretty. If you have a layout that works for you, that's great, but the amount of mental gear shifting it takes to go to another system can lead to difficulties. One big problem with OS/2 was that its desktop could be corrupted very easily, forcing the user back to the basic layout. In some cases it could take weeks for the user to get comfortable with the system again.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I was most impressed with the RedHat 6.1 install. It detected all my hardware including my video card and monitor (Though my hand tuned XF86 modelines yield a better refresh rate) and seems to do a very good job of detecting and dealing with changes to the kernel and hardware.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That would just about rock, especially if the network made the theme available to the public. Think "Good Advertising."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
...well, that's what all this seems to be saying.
Believe me, I've been there, and I've had all the security, legality and maintainability headaches you could ever want.
Security -- people downloading stuff: yep, absolutely it can be a problem. But you know what? You really can't stop them from doing that if the software is compact, self contained and doesn't need access to the system directory or the registry. And very determined people can always find a way -- there isn't an NT admin alive that could keep me out of a machine I have physical access to. Fortunately by nature I'm a cooperative chap,but others with similar or greater abilities aren't. Sometimes ineffectually enforced rules invite the very behavior they're supposed to prevent.
Legality: you need a policy that everyone understands and which is enforced. Everyone knows the ground rules, and there are disciplinary consequences. Usually putting offenders at the back of the upgrade queue is sufficient, but more drastic action could be taken.
Maintainability: Yep. That stupid screen saver could be a problem. But, if it makes somebody's job a little more fun, its worth at least a little hassle. I once made an executive secretary's day by showing her how to turn off the beep on her computer -- her PHB thought every time the computer beeped she was making a mistake. I always felt that optimizing the subjective experience of the user was an important goal.
Freeing the user is hard work. They will make mistakes. They'll be a pain in the a**. My problem with most IT departments is that they overreact at the prospect of users making more work for them -- if you're doing your job, it'll be hard work one way or the other.
By the way it sounds like you ended up with a pretty similar policy to the one I had. It means that you have to work extra hard so the user never ever feels like his request is being processed by an impossibly slow bureacracy. I think supplying things like the MP3 player is a nice touch.
Getting back to the topic at hand -- I agree there is no OS panacea, but NT does seem to be unreasonably fragile with respect to your choice of software to run on it. Bad software crashes (sometimes good software too). Bad OSs crash when bad software crashes (sometimes good ones too). The way I prefer to think of this is not that professional standards require maximal user restriction, but that NT simply makes more administrative work to create a IT service that is friendly and responsive.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Please post your configuration details. This is something that could be made into a turnkey for
coffeebars, etc.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It involves hard work, but it is not at all synonymous with "elbow grease." This is yet another indication that this guy is blowing smoke.
Where I work, the most skilled technical resources are always dedicated to UNIX. We have experienced Windows sysadmins, too, but (in my view) the average Windows sysadmin is a skilled user, while the average UNIX sysadmin is a skilled programmer.
... or ... $WINDOWS_PACKAGE didn't have the promised functionality so we can't get it to work right, but it should be in the next beta version which we're getting next month.
So, my staff can take a cryptic, unfriendly, (buggy?) UNIX software package and write scripts, wrappers, and web-based front ends to make it work like a dream in the enterprise.
On the windows side, things are different. Run installshield. Configure all the options. Test. If the software doesn't work exactly as required, then submit bug or feature request and wait for next version. Spin. repeat.
Unix users are used to customizing things to get exactly what they want. They accept cryptic, difficult installs of commercial unix software because they can customize it and make it do exactly what they want and it works.
Imagine windows software that required hand-editing of the registry or using edit to open config files and batch files. Image buying a windows program that had no GUI! Users would go nuts and slam the software into the ground as backwards, unfriendly, counter-intuitive, impossible-to-install, etc...
unix users just RTFM, install, configure, and run it. (and then start re-writing the scripts and customizing the solution).
And all management would hear is that the unix software upgrade/install was working great and went as planned and now we have this great web-based view of the data (hacked in perl by $SYSADMIN)
Which of the above statements would you rather report to your manager?
MORAL: There's no substiture for experienced IT staff.
- UNIX (Linux) was hard to learn.
- There was little documentation.
- There were few users.
- It was only used by engineers.
This stuff I'm replying to should be labelled "mythology". No matter how often Microsoft tells you this story, it remains more lie than truth.Hard to learn compared with what? Compared with tying my shoe? Certainly. Compared with learning how to build a car? Hardly. Compared with learning what you have to learn to graduate from high school? Far, far from it. Hard compared to the vocational training needed in other jobs? The depends on the job. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
My goodness, whatever can you be talking about? Are you unaware of how revolution the Unix approach to documentation actually was? The BSD 4.4 documentation set, co-published by Usenix and O'Reilly, remains remarkably close to what we received in Version 7, although admittedly better than what we got in First Edition. I'm not talking about just manpages, either, essential though those are, but also the whole set of critical supplementary documents, all available on-line It's true that what some despectively refer to as "Winix" seems too often to have forgotten this lesson, but it was clearly present and revolutionary.
Again, there seems to be a difference of perspective here. Sure, maybe in the early 70s there weren't many, but by the early 80s, there were countless thousands upon thousands upon thousands of users. I remember putting 3,000 students per semester onto Unix systems, just as my university. There were scores of others across the world doing the same thing, but with higher numbers.
Not at all. It was used by huge numbers students, mathemeticians, programmers, scientists, and everybody else, even secretaries. At one point in time, the secretaries at very large institutions used vi to draft troff documents for all internal paperwork. They weren't idiots, but this is hardly rocket science.
you CANNOT tightent up a win anything box so that noone can mess with it and vandalize it. you can do this with Linux/X
I can lock up a DOS/Win 3.1 box tighter than a drum. Lock out the F5/F8 keys using SWITCHES in CONFIG.SYS (I think - check MS-DOS help for CONFIG.SYS commands - it's in there). Put WIN in AUTOEXEC.BAT. In SYSTEM.INI, set SHELL=the custom app that the user sees. You're not running Program Mangler, which is what most people thought of as Windows, but you are running Windows. Win 95 is slightly harder but also very doable (ie I've done it but can't remember what exact steps to take off the top of my head).
This, of course, does not address issues of stability or anything like that. I think you're right overall; I just had to take issue with that one statement.
I know few people that don't use X in Linux/Unix. I build GUI tools in Glade (a GUI-based GUI-building tool) and use a graphical source level debugger. I make extensive use of the memory-hogging perty features of XEmacs. I find that plenty of techs switch to this hybrid of using GUI wrappers for command line tools (eg. DDD has a gdb/pdb/pydb window at the bottom, XEmacs is still Emacs, and X lets me open more xterms) when they realize it is more efficient.
I am of the opinion that your comment was meant only to incite immature tempers
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.