[Samba] Horrible Linux/Samba vs Windows political battle - can you help?

[Dimitri Yioulos]

On Tuesday 20 September 2005 2:56 am, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
> Gregory A. Cain schrieb:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I am currently the IT Manager for a 30-person architectural firm. About
> > 5 months ago we hired a new employee. He is quite good at what he does.
> > He is also extremely opinionated, particularly when it comes to computer
> > software, including server software.
> >
> > I'm running the office server functions on RedHat, Fedora and Trustix
> > servers. He has managed to convince my boss that there are serious
> > problems with these servers and with Linux in general. After having
> > worked here for over 14 years, I would have hoped my boss would have
> > more trust in my choices.
> >
> > In any case, I now find myself in the position of having to defend my
> > position here. My boss has gone as far as to hire an independent
> > consultant to evaluate our whole network infrastructure, simply on the
> > basis of the new employee's statemenets about the worthlessness of
> > Linux. I do not relish being put in this position, however I'm going to
> > take a stand.
> >
> > If there is anyone reading this who works in the field of architecture
> > or engineering, and with CAD or BIM software, who is using Linux as your
> > server software, I would sure be appreciative it if you could write a
> > testimonial for me to help me convince my boss that migrating from Linux
> > to MS would be a horrible mistake.
>
> perhaps it would help us if you told which statements he said about "the
> worthlessness of Linux"?
> and why he claims Windows would be superior over Linux in your case.
>
> what our company does at the moment is quite reverse - migrating our
> customers Windows to Linux, or just setting Linux in new locations, as
> it has better value and is easier to manage.
>
> --
> Tomek
> http://wpkg.org

I don't work in an engineering or archtectural firm, but I hope this will help 
anyway:

I manage a busy 45-person financial services firm.  SInce we're a lender, and 
thus scrutinized not only by customers and a board of directors, but also by 
regulators in every state in which we do business, reliability, stability,  
scalability, and security are all paramount to us.  Some might say I gambled 
on Linux, relying too heavily on it in a high-profile environment.  However, 
several years of working with it and following led me to believe it would do 
all that was asked of it.  And, since our system was built when we first 
started the business, we stood to save lots of money we could plow into other 
aspects of the business.

We have eight servers in our current set-up: one Windows 2003 server, and 
seven CentOS Linux servers.  The one Windows server is there only because of 
the accounting software we use (it hasn't been ported to Linux ... yet).  The 
Windows server does act as the system's PDC.  The Linux servers act as: file 
and print servers, mail server, web server, database server, application 
server, fax server, secure FTP and VPN servers, and firewall.  Samba works 
beautifully to allow us to access shares on the Linux servers from our 
Windows XP desktops.  Road warriors connect quickly and securely via out open 
source VPN.  Our systems are backed up to tape using a commercial backup 
software running on Linux.

If I've ever had a problem with these systems, and there have been few, my own 
intelligence and ability to research (I'd need to rely on that in a pure 
Microsoft environment, too), and help from the community get me through 
nicely.  I've achieved the reliability, stability,  scalability, and security 
I was after without sacrificing on the quality of the programs I've installed 
and use.  Our end-users are virually unaware of the back-end systems we use.  
Frankly, they don't care, as long as they "just work".  And, they do, day-in 
and day-out, for over two years now.

I'm not trying to evangelize here.  I have business needs that have to be 
metright away with the good products.  I also don't want to knock Microsoft; 
I do use its products.  However, they're no more reliable, stable, scalable, 
or secure than our Linux servers.  In fact, our experience is that they tend 
to be less so.  Nor are they an more easy to maintain.

Finally, If I'm not convincing enough, read almost any publication these day 
(general circulation, not just trade jouranls), and see how many companies, 
from the Fortune 500 on down, are using Linux in their shops.  And, for 
mission critical purposes.  The likes of IBM, Oracle, etc. wouldn't be 
involved with Linux if it we'ren't a great product here for the long-haul.

Hope this helps.

I'll be happy to provide my full name, title, and company off-list, if you 
need.

Dimitri