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

[Craig Ringer]

>>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

Absolutely. Perhaps I should've put it as "don't add more platforms 
unless you need to."

> But seriously: even if all users' systems are a single
> platform, how many people have Microsoft Windows as the OS on their
> router hardware?

*shudder*

 > 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?

Far too many. It's scary what gets sold to small retailers. I've seen 
PoS systems running WinME, not even locked down. There was a minimised 
copy of "solitaire" in the task bar.

> Currently, it
> would be reasonable to expect that most environment benefits from some
> heterogeneity.

Absolutely. I'm currently admin of a network that includes Linux (Debian 
and RH8), MacOS 9, Win98, win95 (being retired at last!), WinNT 4, and 
SCO OpenServer. This has been mixed - we've had a lot of problems with 
the macs and their "interesting" networking, but otherwise it's worked 
well enough. Still, we're moving towards a mostly NT5 + Linux 
environment. The only reason we still have macs is that we've been 
upgrading the Mac environment since the MacOS 7 days when MacOS 7 was 
just /better/ than the x86 alternatives for DTP.

So ... ideally, I'd like to keep the platform count down. We'll 
introduce a new platform if we have a good reason (that's how Linux got 
there, ditto Win95/98 years ago). If I don't have a really good reason, 
I'll use what I've got.

> 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.

Indeed. It's still desireable where possible and when no other factors 
override it, though.

Craig Ringer

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