Re: How To Abandon Microsoft

From: Mxsmanic (mxsmanic_at_gmail.com)
Date: 09/25/05 

Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 10:26:42 +0200

tomstdenis@gmail.com writes:

> Both redhat and windows suck.
>
> Gentoo is where it's at.

One can't really say that any OS is good or bad without specifying the
applications for which it is used. Windows is a very good desktop
operating system; in fact, it's the best available. In second place
is Mac OS X (not its predecessors); it is in second place mainly
because of a lack of applications. Linux and its ilk are very
distantly behind the two leaders.

For servers, I prefer FreeBSD. It's a single, stable UNIX operating
system with one current version, so you don't have to worry about
"distros." FreeBSD and Apache, in particular, are a marriage made in
heaven.

> You build and configure one Gentoo box. Takes ~10 hours. (but not
> supervised hours you can do other things as it's 95% automated).

What sort of fully automated installation process requires 10 hours??

> Now let's look at Windows setup...
>
> You pay 400$ for the software.
> You pay 2-3 hours per box to setup and install patches on.
> You repeat the cost PER box.
>
> Now let's look at the Redhat setup...
>
> You pay 349$ for the basic ES install.
> You pay 3-4 hours per box to setup and install patches (up2date is slow
> as ***)
> You repeat this cost PER box if you count on getting support (you can
> clone but I wouldn't).

Now let's look at the FreeBSD setup ...

You pay nothing for the software.
You pay a working day for the first box to get things set up.
You can clone the OS to other machines with compatible hardware in
twenty minutes or so. They you might need another hour to personalize
parameters.

> And since each box has the EXACT
> SAME INSTALL they're interchangeable and can be highly redundant [e.g.
> good].

It's virtually unheard of for two boxes to have the exact same
install, especially if they are on a network.

> Upgrading software is simple too.

Once you have the software running, you don't ever need to upgrade.
Upgrade is a bad word in production environments.

> Alternatively you can update the master every month,
> test it, clone it onto all the other boxes and be set.

You never update production systems once a month. You update
production systems only when you have no choice, and as rarely as
possible.

> So stop being a fucking pushover and give a real distro a try.

I prefer real UNIX instead, not a "distro" hodgepodge with a UNIX
kernel imitation.

Linux is a bit of a solution looking for a problem. On servers, UNIX
already does everything that's needed, and on desktops, Windows (and
the Mac) already do everything that's needed. Linux exists only
because some people want Windows but don't want Microsoft's name on
it, so they've tried to shoehorn a UNIX-like environment into a
Windows hole, predictably with only limited success. 

--
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