Another Reason

[outlier_lynn]

Another reason for Corporate America to shun Microsoft Operating Systems -- as if security problems alone weren't enough -- is that it takes forever to admin one of these boxes.

I'm busy taking the extraneous crap off a machine -- crap installed by an idiot so that he could do really stupid things that have nothing to do with work -- and it is taking forever. The "Remove Software" function is a damn joke. I'd hate to be paying someone $20 or more an hour to do this!

And I just remembered that my son-in-law is a security specialist on Microsoft products/networks. I think I need to talk to him!

Comments

[mayaknife.livejournal.com]

Whenever a new version Maya comes out, I need to update our build scripts to take it into account. On Linux this means duplicating one line in one file and takes about a minute. On Windows (Microsoft Visual Studio) it means click, click, click, click, click, click, click...and takes about half an hour.

Because *everything* is better when it's "visual", right?

I still remember when Microsoft first came out with Windows for servers. You had to have a screen attached to the server or else Windows wouldn't run. They completely did not understand system administration. And in many ways, they still don't. Remote, unattended installation of Windows packages across a large number of systems is still a nightmare. That's why whenever Microsoft tries to prove that Windows is cheaper than Linux, they insist on using the same number of sysadmins for both systems, because otherwise jaws would start dropping at the huge wage costs involved in keeping Windows networks up and running.

[crazed-lynn.livejournal.com]

I was very upset with everything moved away from MS=DOS all those years ago. Nothing I wanted to do was made easier by a GUI. Nothing. Now I like them for the graphical things I do, but I still hate them with a passion for admin.

The only nice thing about my windowed environment for admin is that I can have multiple term sessions going and visible at the same time. :)

I have tried to use the GUI admin packages for configuring Apache or Postfix and find them worse than difficult -- they break the server in bad ways.

But, then, I'm in the dark ages about a lot of the things I do. When I have trouble debugging code, I pretty-print it from emacs and compare the changed code against the original until I find the problem. I could probably do it with diff, but I have enough trouble keeping the code in my head without also keeping the diff syntax there, too. :)

I'm excited for Alix on her trip east. But it does mean another longish time apart for you two. That must be taxing after awhile. Something like the Navy deployments I suffered through for all those years.

At least this is a short trip.

I'm back to work now. We have a bunch of fax automation in this business and a lot of failed outgoing faxes. "corrupted ack" errors after page 1. I have to figure out if it's our equipment or not. I'm replacing the computers driving it all tonight. I would be changing to linux/hylafax, but I need to interface with a box running MS-DOS 6.0! I don't know how to do that with Linux. :)

Later.