Slashdot Mirror
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. "
- 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 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.
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