On Mon, 22 Jun 1998, George Toft wrote:
> This is an honest query from someone who does not
> understand how the real world works. In my job, the OS
You're being sarcastic... right?
> If our computers don't work right, our first step is
> reboot Win95 (clients) or NT (server), wherever the
This is one of the big arguments in favor of Unix. You simply don't have
to do this (at least on the server end). Rebooting the server is
something of a catastrophe in many situations (especially where there are
lots of clients).
> Big Questions:
> 1. Why such an uproar over OS's when most problems
> are in the applications (except when NT munched
> itself one week after I took over).
Because most problems AREN'T in the applications. Yes, if your server app
blows up, it's (usually) not the OS's fault. But if the server app blows
up, the OS (if so configured) or the administrator (if not) can fire it
right back up again.
Also, having the OS blow up is someone more catastrophic, because it
greatly increases the loss of data. Also, it destroys ALL the services on
that system, not just the one that crashed. Finally, having the OS crash
is simply more aggravating. I don't know why this is but psychologically
I know it to be true. :)
> 2a. Why does it matter if the OS is a big name like
> Microsoft, or a free OS like Linux, freeBSD, etc?
It shouldn't; but management (usually) doesn't understand the hacker way
and (usually) therefore does not trust free products.
Also, managers just don't seem to mind spending the money on big products.
They just feel more comfortable knowing that they paid for the product,
they are "entitled" to more because of that.
Never mind that software doesn't work that way... real support always
comes from your tech staff, not the company that produced the software.
Once you've got the software, you've gotten all you're going to get.
> 2b. Do companies call Microsoft or Caldera or RedHat
> if some application misbehaves?
Not always, but they like having them there. Don't ask me why; tech
support is almost always worthless.
> 3. Do companies have IS departments to fix problems,
> or do the IS people call Microsoft? If a company has
Hopefully the IS department is competent enough to do things themselves,
but... Management likes to think that tech support is competent, and can
answer questions; and they don't realize that competent IS people can
figure out how to solve a problem themselves even if they don't know
what's really going on.
> an IS department with trained professionals, why
> would the company switch from one OS (say Unix) to
> another OS (NT)? This seems counter-productive and
> expensive to me.
It is, but management gets funny ideas sometimes. They just get it in
their heads that their system is obsolete and needs to be replaced.
Sometimes it is. Why they would switch from Unix to NT when all their
staff is trained with Unix is beyond me. Or vice versa, for that matter.
Everyone knows (or should) that supporting technology is really the
biggest cost of it, not the initial outlay for the software.
> OBTW: I "grew up" on Microsoft (TRS-80, Apple ][,
> MS-DOS, Windows... and recently discovered the power
Apple // didn't use much Microsoft stuff, and relatively little on the
TRS-80. Apple // was probably closer to the Linux way than most anything
since then - cheap components, free source code, you could even build them
from a kit if you wanted. :)
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