City Of Barcelona Will Soon Be Using Linux

[gavsdavs]

TonyRPH said:

I can't believe you wrote that! I'm sure Linus Torvalds and the myriad other Linux developers will be more than enamoured by your comments.

I too have supported Solaris, Sco Unix and Aix over the years, and Linux is as good (and indeed better in later versions) as any of them.

Linux is certainly far more admin friendly than any of the above.

I think your comments are quite unfounded.

The opensource community has strengths and weaknesses and your comments suggest you don't want to see both sides of it (or the intended humour).

If you're a commercial company and you find a horrible bug in your operating system, you can either bk the company providing the operating system to fix it, immediately (and they can, and will, because they own the source code and aren't beholden to some other party to do it). Even if nobody else ever uses the fix they cook for you, you can use the commercial agreement you have with the supplier to get it fixed.

You generally cannot do that with even commercially supported linuxes, because these companies (redhat, suse, etc) are repackagers of what is open source code and the open source community generally do what's good for everyone and will ignore what is wanted by the single party. The repackagers largely won't fork from the mainstream branches (i.e Linus still owns and decides what's in the mainstream kernel, even if there are devs for redhat contributing patches into it).

I've seen and had to work round awful bugs in glibc, NIS and NFS implementations of linux (admittedly this was 8-10 years ago) that weren't going to be fixed because there was no upstream owner of the code (specifically, the NIS client). With a commercial Unix, you always know who the upstream owner is and who to go to for a fixed package.

Recent linux distributions have become a lot better, but they still suffer this "who do you yell at when it doesn't work" problem that is not there for commercially supported operating systems.

Linux is constantly changing and being reinvented by the latest devs (example yum and dnf, and init scripts and systemd and unit files.) , whereas commercial unixes offer stability - even at the cost of reduced functionality. Sometimes, that's what COMPANIES want. Generally, end users will sacrifice stablity for functionality.

What's driven people away from the commercial unixes in many cases is that a) license cost and b) intel hardware has outpaced most of the in-house chip makers (i.e. Sun, HP, nearly IBM) and support on these commodity intel boxes is best on Linux and Windows.

Current company is running 50% redhat (for the maintenance agreement) and 50% centos. They want to be able to get support when it doesnt work properly. End users don't care. If I had to run a mission critical workload I'd prefer NOT to do it on intel hardware (your idea of mission critical may be different to mine)

[TonyRPH]

gavsdavs said:

The opensource community has strengths and weaknesses and your comments suggest you don't want to see both sides of it (or the intended humour).

Strange sense of humour...

I take a 'horse for courses' approach.

Linux will suit some environments but not others. I mostly prefer to deploy Windows servers for file sharing duties, mostly because file permission management is far more granular and less complicated than Samba in Linux, where it's typically a bit of a nightmare to set different access rights / permissions through the same directory tree for example.

However for some tasks I prefer to deploy a Linux server...

As for desktops - again Windows wins out for me in the corporate environment because of group policies.

However, Linux does suit many people better (usually devs for example) and they will get a Linux desktop if required.

So I do see both sides of things,

gavsdavs said:

If you're a commercial company and you find a horrible bug in your operating system, you can either bk the company providing the operating system to fix it, immediately (and they can, and will, because they own the source code and aren't beholden to some other party to do it). Even if nobody else ever uses the fix they cook for you, you can use the commercial agreement you have with the supplier to get it fixed.

You generally cannot do that with even commercially supported linuxes, because these companies (redhat, suse, etc) are repackagers of what is open source code and the open source community generally do what's good for everyone and will ignore what is wanted by the single party. The repackagers largely won't fork from the mainstream branches (i.e Linus still owns and decides what's in the mainstream kernel, even if there are devs for redhat contributing patches into it).

And if Linus didn't retain ownership of the Kernel, it would likely turn into a free for all and we'd have a glorified mess.

I'm fairly certain the Samba devs have the same approach, that they have total control of what goes into their code, likewise with Apache and several other packages. You can request / provide fixes for these and they will be merged into the mainstream product after testing where applicable.

gavsdavs said:

I've seen and had to work round awful bugs in glibc, NIS and NFS implementations of linux (admittedly this was 8-10 years ago) that weren't going to be fixed because there was no upstream owner of the code (specifically, the NIS client). With a commercial Unix, you always know who the upstream owner is and who to go to for a fixed package.

Probably longer than 8 - 10 years ago I think - most major packages have been quite stable for quite a long time now.

gavsdavs said:

Recent linux distributions have become a lot better, but they still suffer this "who do you yell at when it doesn't work" problem that is not there for commercially supported operating systems.

I think we've all had to bang our heads against a wall regarding bugs, even with mainstream operating systems - and sure, you can shout at the 'right' people where available, but that doesn't always mean the bug(s) are fixed in a timely manner...

gavsdavs said:

Linux is constantly changing and being reinvented by the latest devs (example yum and dnf, and init scripts and systemd and unit files.) , whereas commercial unixes offer stability - even at the cost of reduced functionality. Sometimes, that's what COMPANIES want. Generally, end users will sacrifice stablity for functionality.

It's evolving, and tbh I felt that systemd was a backward step but then we always complain about new things / things we don't understand.

However I do still question the move away from initd scripts, but that's not my call.

gavsdavs said:

What's driven people away from the commercial unixes in many cases is that a) license cost and b) intel hardware has outpaced most of the in-house chip makers (i.e. Sun, HP, nearly IBM) and support on these commodity intel boxes is best on Linux and Windows.

They've all effectively priced themselves out of the market. Who wants to pay a 6 figure sum for hardware, when it's possible to buy Intel based hardware for 4 figures...

Back in early 2000, I remember being party to the roll out of an IBM RS6000 system running Oracle - cost? Nearly £500k IIRC - ludicrous!

No small wonder their market share has dwindled...

gavsdavs said:

Current company is running 50% redhat (for the maintenance agreement) and 50% centos. They want to be able to get support when it doesnt work properly. End users don't care. If I had to run a mission critical workload I'd prefer NOT to do it on intel hardware (your idea of mission critical may be different to mine)

I fail to see the issue with Intel here...?

It does what it says on the tin, is readily available at low cost and easily replaceable.

Granted, I have no experience of truly mission critical systems, only going by what I have heard / read.

Edited by TonyRPH on Tuesday 16th January 08:56

[sgtBerbatov]

Rawwr said:

sgtBerbatov said:

"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left."

Fairly apt with those two responses.

So the accusation about Microsoft, brown envelopes and a city? Going to pop that in a letter to Microsoft's legal department? Or would you prefer to stick to political arguments?

Munich are an incredibly rich local council, and have spent 10 years moving everything from Microsoft to Linux. Now, all of a sudden, they want to switch it all back to Microsoft. Akin to moving everything out of your old house to a new house, to only then put everything back in its box and ship it back to the old place.

You must also consider the UK parliament's mandate that all documents must be in the Open Document Format, and not a proprietary format like Word or Excel. When this was introduced, Microsoft lobbied like crazy to stop that from happening.

And in political terms, a lobbyist is more or less the receiver of an envelope of some colour and varying degrees of thickness. That, unfortunately, is a fact.

[randlemarcus]

sgtBerbatov said:

And in political terms, a lobbyist is more or less the receiver of an envelope of some colour and varying degrees of thickness. That, unfortunately, is a fact.

Or the opposite. I suspect it's a rare MP thats prepared to pay to be told which way to vote

[Rawwr]

sgtBerbatov said:

Munich are an incredibly rich local council, and have spent 10 years moving everything from Microsoft to Linux. Now, all of a sudden, they want to switch it all back to Microsoft. Akin to moving everything out of your old house to a new house, to only then put everything back in its box and ship it back to the old place.

Or it's like trying something, finding out it doesn't work as well as expected and then changing back. Akin to buying a massive butt plug, finding out it hurts to much and then going back to using small root vegetables.

sgtBerbatov said:

You must also consider the UK parliament's mandate that all documents must be in the Open Document Format, and not a proprietary format like Word or Excel. When this was introduced, Microsoft lobbied like crazy to stop that from happening.

And in political terms, a lobbyist is more or less the receiver of an envelope of some colour and varying degrees of thickness. That, unfortunately, is a fact.

It's moot. Microsoft's answer was simply to support ODF.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Microsoft are perfect - far from it, in fact - but I don't believe they're any better or any worse than anyone else.

[Rawwr]

gavsdavs said:

Having looked after both professionally and personally for 20 odd years, there is a reason that you can refer to Linux as "Bedroomware". Because it's coded by people who spend lots of their time in their soiled underpants in their parents lofts/basements. You get what you pay for. Well, at least you used to, now you're stuck with Linux and all that entails

That's a bit strong. Whilst there is a large degree of junkware and tat available for Linux, that's true of every OS. No, you wouldn't want to support an unsupported application but the flipside is that dedicated/embedded machines tend to be exceptionally reliable in places where a Windows-based machine wouldn't do so well.

You need to use the right tool for the job.

[gavsdavs]

TonyRPH said:

I fail to see the issue with Intel here...?

It does what it says on the tin, is readily available at low cost and easily replaceable.

Granted, I have no experience of truly mission critical systems, only going by what I have heard / read.

No real issue with intel - they are fast and cheap. They are a bit more prone to crashing/stop working without giving an admin a hint as to what went wrong, such is the flip side of the really close hardware/OS integration that the commercial OS's provide(d). Linux has to deal with any and every combination of hardware that may be in a machine and they're never going to be as tightly coupled if you own the chips and the OS.

It's just changed the way people run some workloads. 10-15 years ago clusters and scale-out reslience was still relatively unusual and expensive and now it's absolutely required. Which is a good thing, because you can use cheaper and less reliable tin for more and more workloads because your apps are better designed.

[hyphen]

TonyRPH said:

gavsdavs said:

Having looked after both professionally and personally for 20 odd years, there is a reason that you can refer to Linux as "Bedroomware". Because it's coded by people who spend lots of their time in their soiled underpants in their parents lofts/basements. You get what you pay for. Well, at least you used to, now you're stuck with Linux and all that entails

I can't believe you wrote that! I'm sure Linus Torvalds and the myriad other Linux developers will be more than enamoured by your comments.

I too have supported Solaris, Sco Unix and Aix over the years, and Linux is as good (and indeed better in later versions) as any of them.

Linux is certainly far more admin friendly than any of the above.

I think your comments are quite unfounded.

Nah, he is right. All 10,700 of the $3BN turnover, S&P 500, Red Hat employees, no matter where in the world, do wear soiled underpants and live in their parents bedroom.

randlemarcus said:

Open source is not free software. Folks still want to complain to someone and those people cost money. Users want well written software, with good UX.

In some cases, open source support can cost more than MS stuff.

Edited by hyphen on Tuesday 16th January 22:56

[hyphen]

randlemarcus said:

Open source is not free software. Folks still want to complain to someone and those people cost money. Users want well written software, with good UX.

In some cases, open source support can cost more than MS stuff.

[gavsdavs]

hyphen said:

Nah, he is right. All 10,700 of the $3BN turnover, S&P 500, Red Hat employees, no matter where in the world, do wear soiled underpants and live in their parents bedroom.

I forgot to mention "have a limited sense of humour" if that helps you with some more context.

Quoting Rawr again because that message doesn't seem to be sinking in and you're getting upset about someone poking fun at your favourite:

Rawwr said:

I think your problem - as highlighted by most of your combination of pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft posts - is that you have a very narrow view, perhaps only thinking of a single system. There are some very experienced Systems and Infrastructure guys on here and I'm fairly confident that the majority of them will accept that there's a place for everything; you use the right tool for the job.

A single home user using a single installation of Debian is one thing. A company or organisation having to manage tens-of-thousands of clients across many different locations all over the world and having to account for every variation of OS you can imagine, is quite another.

You have to be agnostic in this game or you'll ultimately drive yourself insane trying to come up with arguments to defend pointless tribalism.

[BigMon]

I remember starting university in 1995 and being told that Microsoft would be going under soon due to Linux.

Similar for learning C++. Waste of time. Archaic language.

Similar for learning Visual Basic. Phased out soon. Waste of time.

Here I am 23 years later managing a network of Windows servers and clients and occasionally writing Excel macros in VBA.

[SystemParanoia]

BigMon said:

writing Excel macros in VBA.

So much more *Fun building a web scraper using vanilla VBA and no plugins

excuse me whilst i pull my hair out.
I just want python and scapy.. please! lol

[randlemarcus]

hyphen said:

Suspect I am due a parrot here, but what precisely are you trying to say? Most of the great unwashed think open source means shareware, therefore cheap. Are you suggesting I am wrong in explaining that open source still needs support, or querying the fact that some open source support is more expensive than the MS support costs, once staff skill costs are taken into account?

Or do you think that Father Ted is simply the bee's knees, and couldn't refrain from posting the jpg?

[TonyRPH]

randlemarcus said:

hyphen said:

Suspect I am due a parrot here, but what precisely are you trying to say? Most of the great unwashed think open source means shareware, therefore cheap. Are you suggesting I am wrong in explaining that open source still needs support, or querying the fact that some open source support is more expensive than the MS support costs, once staff skill costs are taken into account?

Or do you think that Father Ted is simply the bee's knees, and couldn't refrain from posting the jpg?

I think (could be wring) that your phrase: "In some cases, open source support can cost more than MS stuff." triggered the Father Ted moment.

I think I got it anyway.

[hyphen]

randlemarcus said:

Suspect I am due a parrot here, but what precisely are you trying to say? Most of the great unwashed think open source means shareware, therefore cheap. Are you suggesting I am wrong in explaining that open source still needs support, or querying the fact that some open source support is more expensive than the MS support costs, once staff skill costs are taken into account?

Or do you think that Father Ted is simply the bee's knees, and couldn't refrain from posting the jpg?

I was replying to your confusing "Open source is not free software because " as the software itself is free

Clearly you meant 'total cost of running open source" rather than the literal 'open source software is not free', but I like that Father Ted pic so any excuse to use it

Edited by hyphen on Wednesday 17th January 22:15

[downthepub]

Pays yer money and takes yer pick. It's not really a technical decision in my experience, more down to the wants and personalities of the (non technical) decision makers. And then for whatever arcane and political reason, upstairs will decide that NT/RHEL 5 or 6 or 7/Oracle's Unbreakable Linux/Windows 2003/Windows 2016/Linux2/Azure/AWS is the favour of the season, then it will be the horn of plenty financially speaking in a mad dash to towards someone's bonus all encompassing goal. Before it changes. And then we dash off in a different direction.

[WinstonWolf]

What's the Linux equivalent to Group Policy?

[SystemParanoia]

WinstonWolf said:

What's the Linux equivalent to Group Policy?

Group policy

you can join a linux machine to a domain

[WinstonWolf]

SystemParanoia said:

WinstonWolf said:

What's the Linux equivalent to Group Policy?

Group policy

you can join a linux machine to a domain

Does it give you the same granular level of control over the client OS and user environment?

From an enterprise perspective GP is the real driver IMO. And I *really* hate saying that as a former Novell CNE...

[gavsdavs]

WinstonWolf said:

What's the Linux equivalent to Group Policy?

Taking my stab at this - I'm not entirely sure of the full breadth of things that can be achieved with Group Policy - but I see it as a single management framework for ensuring site wide configuration settings are adhered to. What eventlogs log, enforce various network protocols, user password strengths and so on. The MS philosophy is to bundle configuration for all things into a single framework and when they get it right, they do it pretty well, providing you largely have a small set of up to date MS instances which can all be effectively managed by GP. This is a distributed configuration management framework.

Linux - is actually just an operating system and mangement of many unix systems is not done by Linux itself - you look to configuration management or orchestration tools like puppet/ansible/chef/cobbler(though I'm not sure about that one) to reach onto your many linux systems and configure them as per your policy requirements. It is MUCH more loosely coupled. Sometimes that means it's harder to do stuff that GPMC can offer you out of the box, but it's a lot more in your own power to do what you want - you can tackle many variants of linux and unix with open source configuration management tools if you're willing to graft it in yourself.

GPMC is an ecosystem toolset to enforce company policy on MS OS instances, *Linux* is just the operating system and ecosystem toolsets exist to apply policy on them..
This is of course, my view of what GP is and what it does for Windows guys and I'm guessing at what the equivalent looks like in the unix/linux world.