[plug] Are we at 'war' with Microsoft?

[James Devenish]

In message <3FAB4B91.3000208 at postnewspapers.com.au>
on Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 03:36:49PM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
> Also ... the /option/ is nice, but admin work on such environments would 
> be screaming hell. Perhaps in a world of perfect standards compliance 
> and security. Otherwise, it's "pick as few as possible and run with that."

While that's certainly true, there are very few operating systems that
are the appropriate choice for every purpose within an organisation. So
"more than one" is often a good plan, even if it's only so that the
techies can use UNIX-like OSes as their desktops in an otherwise Windows
environment :-) But seriously: even if all users' systems are a single
platform, how many people have Microsoft Windows as the OS on their
router hardware? How many people can afford to do all their mail with
Microsoft Exchange? How many people spend Mac OS X licence money on
firewalls? How many point-of-sales systems run Windows XP? Currently, it
would be reasonable to expect that most environment benefits from some
heterogeneity. It's the reality that a lot of admins live with, and the
"options" may be limited by factors orthogonal to the instinct for
simplification.


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