More Low/No Cost Unix

[Scott Williams <swill41@jcpenney.com>]

Okay, many responses to my comments. When I had to decide (or reccommend) Unix 
or NT, my reccomendation was for Unix. This was shot down because of cost and 
NT was implimented. (NT 3.51) At that time, 2 years ago, Linux was free, you 
could download it from many ftp sites, but the instructions and documentation 
were very lacking. You were basicaly on your own. Not an option. Now, I'm at a 
different shop, with Sun boxes in the computer room and Sparc20's on every 
desktop. Needless to say, I'm in hog heaven with Solaris 2.5.1. I've seen 
Linux grow fast and furious, but not to the point where I would put my job, 
career, and future on the line by giving it my endorsement for use here. But 
hey, times change really fast in this field, and I'm always open to evaluate 
technologies. Sarah, Jay, and the others have convinced me to get an old scrap 
486DX and build a Linux box. I'll do this at home and play with it. We'll see. 
But my position at this time still stands that it is too risky to use in my 
shop. But that's only my opinion, not a standard call to shoot down Linux.

I don't have a team of programmers to edit code at my disposal. There's only 
me, my manager, an NT guy, Help Desk (local apps) and a printer tech. If I 
can't figure something out, I have to call Sun. I depend on it. I'm just an 
SA, not a programmer. I've always had great response from them, and they've 
always fixed my problems. But again, I'm on Solaris with all Sun equipment. 
Nothing bizzare or adapted. Rather turnkey. And, I've always got great support 
from Microsoft. Again, Intel boxes on NT running Office. Pretty turnkey. We 
also have top level service contracts from both. It's expensive, but well 
worth it. You get what you pay for. Spend the bucks, and it really lowers your 
stress and problems. Go the cheap route, and you have to "rig" things, tweak 
things, mess with things, and generally run around in circles trying to keep 
your shop running. No thanks.

Now, I'm not saying that it is like this everywhere. No, every shop is 
different. Just my experience, here at this shop. My last shop, and HA 
environment, was a nightmare. But the crux of all that boiled down to a 100 
series Sun Storage Array running Prestoserve. Was supposed to be turnkey but 
was a real piece of shit. Another story, another time.

Scott
Paid alot for Unix