The Geek shall inherit..

why use Linux

In the middle of a call from a client with email problems, I was yet again struck by how easy linux makes my job. Now, I support Windows a lot, and I’ve taken a taken steps to make my life as painless as possible, such as a centralised (W)SUS server to make sure all clients run the latest patches and fixes. (On a side note, I do find it amusing when I read people like Leon rant about how much trouble they have with unreliable windows installs at client sites. An extra box, a little bandwidth and most of your problems are solved.).

But today, while trying to track down a strange email delivery issue, it was easier than normal. Check the logs, find the problem to be with greylisting, some changes to exim, restart the service and mail is once more flowing. Trying that in a windows environment would have meant god knows how many restarts and fiddling. and slamming my hand in the door in frustration.

Now I’m not a windows basher, and I’m far from a windows Zealot, but I do solidly believe in horses for courses. People can walk into Hardly Normal or Myer and get a new machine with XP home on it. No thoughts about package management or stable or testing, they can plug it in and turn it on and hey presto, they have a means to surf the net and check email with a UI they (or their kids) know fairly well.

As has been mentioned elsewhere on someone’s blog, it’s not a case of “is linux ready for the corporate desktop”, but a case of “which linux should you use for your corporate desktop”. I use Gentoo for our office and our hosting and colo servers and most of our workstations, but my wife’s machine which is used for accounts, etc runs Fedora. A client site is running Fedora for a few workstations and RHEL3 for their servers. I’ve hooked a few clients up with Ubuntu, but not because of any feeling of love for the work of Canonical, but because as an introduction to linux is a good start.
(rant)
I’m actually not a big fan of Debian, in part due to the number of foaming at the mouth debian people I’ve encountered around the place, who have no interest in other OS’s, and some of whom I’ve witnessed verbally abusing people running Fedora as using an “inferior” linux. When you strip away the package management, the pretty installers and GUI’s, at the end of the day, we’re all running Uncle Linus’ kernel, just with a few tweaks here and there to appease others sense of what does and doesn’t work. Another thing that really gets up my nose are post to LUG lists where someone who is new to linux says “I’ve just installed Fedora/Madriva/some other non-debian based linux and I want to setup a mail server. What’s a good one to use” and you get 15 reply’s back with “apt-get install (senders preffered MTA)”. The person has said they have Fedora, and asked for ideas. WTF give them a debian install command with no other information. Why would your preferred MTA be perfect for their needs. I use Sendmail at some client’s sites, and exim at others. I gauge what MTA they need off what their skill and knowledge level is. And yes, I know there is a port of apt-get to RH, but not everyone installs it.

To misquote Rodney King “can’t get all just get along?”
(end rant)