Subject: [ILUG-BOM] ZDNet article
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 16:58:30 +0530

terrence d'souza wrote:

> Not entirely true. If we had such dumb engineers
> others would'nt be importing them. You need good

Why then can't I find any? Our place has been hiring since last
November, and we've got only one good Linux guy so far.

> Keeping things simple is always welcome but
> making things unstable and unreliable in the
> process is not. If these "professionals" cannot

Where's proof that Windows is unreliable? The desktop editions may be,
but the server editions are rock stable. I run many sites on an NT
server; I know what I'm saying.

> So what is managment doing??

Trying to find people with brains.

> your corp. computers. Incidentally gaming machine
> vendors seem to be switching to Linux with a
> vengenace. Highily customised software is again

Yes, but they're not going open source. They're just shipping Linux
binaries. It would be suicide for them to go open source.

> All distros have agreed to the LSB. The first
> post of the standards is a few weeks old.
> Compliance will be achieved by year end (if I
> remeber correctly).

I'll believe it when I see it.

> > 1) Get a Linux server and a linux admin to
> > maintain it.
> 
> Setup a RAS server (or several remote
> maintainence tools available on freshmeat.net)
> and remotely maintain it.

Long distance calls across the country? With the speed telnet gives over
a modem, I'd much rather have someone there make a visit.

Besides, I've been doing just this for the cross-city connection and I
know for a fact that it doesn't work out. Internet tools won't work
because this is all dial-up land.

> Hardware AMC should do the trick. Nothing Linux
> specific in modems.

If your software gets confused at the response from a modem, it's very
much Linux specific. And this is what happens all the time (which is
also why RAS doesn't work).

> Above RAS solution should do. And train the IT
> dept for maintainence. Train users to use Linux
> GUI and CLI ;-).

Why don't you come over and give that a try? Practical experience
teaches you many things.

> I have several enquiries from Windows commercial
> solutions users who are fedup of using a system
> that needs a reboot 50 times a day. The wonderful

Try IMail on Windows NT. Any idiot can maintain it, and it works
wonderfully. And the package costs only $50.

> Aplixware and StarOffice already do a reasonable
> job.

They do a crappy job at best. I once made the mistake of suggesting that
everyone at work switch over to StarOffice.

> the price of hardware. It is a lot easier to
> maintain a server and thin clients than PCs. That
> is what client server technology is all about.

The thin-client system places too much trust on one server. If the sales
guy doesn't get his e-mail for one day, he stands to lose a 1 lakh
contract. That is inaffordable. If his Windows machine goes down, he can
simply move to another machine and let any average guy poke around at
it. Windows is as easy to restore as it is to crash.

Licensing cost isn't an issue here, and Linux simply isn't a solution.

> Sure there are reasons but not very good ones.
> The reasons are to do with marketing and revenue
> models rather than performance of the OS or
> acceptance by users.

Are you sure that is all? Practically every Windows user around using it
only for marketing and revenue reasons, with no thought to technology?

Linux doesn't even have a proper security model!

-- 

Kiran Jonnalagadda
http://lunateks.com

baby.sh: while true; do echo "^G^G^G^G^G"; sed -e 's/food/poop/';
sync; sync; sleep 15; done