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

[Denis Vlasenko]

On Tuesday 20 September 2005 02:49, Gregory A. Cain wrote:
> 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.

A small example of what problem I have with MS right now
on my part-time job.

I have small database application written in MS Access.
It was working just fine for years on a NT4 box.

Now a new computer has been bought, and I installed Win2k + SP4
on it (I need to use USB, can't stay with NT4).
Also I installed Office2k + SP3.

Guess what. That app mostly still works, but report
generation throws really obscure errors on me now.

The very same Access database, if I copy it to another box
with Win2k and Office2k, works flawlessly.

Can this happen with Linux? Yes, and similarly obscure things
did happen with Linux for me. But I have the source for EVERYTHING.
I tracked down and fixed problems with Linux when they appear.

Now how in hell am I supposed to track that down in Windows world?
Database source, which I have, is fine (it's really trivial), but
how can I look into Office or Windows code? With disassembler?!

Looks like MS won over me again with "Just reinstall everything"
motto.

But "Just reinstall everything" is a lame solution. It's for kids
playing with their home PC, not for real world business critical stuff.
Maybe that employee of yours thinks that it is ok, but [s]he is wrong.
Bugs must be found, understood, and fixed, not worked around.

P.S. An example of bug unfixed for years: NTLDR cannot boot
an NT if NTOSKRNL.EXE (or whatever) is past 4Gb from disk start.
I disasmed the thing. It's simply a math overflow in the loader.
How many years MS needs to fix it? [And if it fixed in XP
(I didn't check yet), don't say me "see? they fixed it!"
because it's too damn slow. It should have been fixed around
NT4 SP3 time.]

We in Linux fix easy stuff like this one within maybe weeks,
if not faster.
--
vda