>>>>> "David" == David Fisher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> [...] Which are we to credit? Our own experience, which is
> limited in extent but very real to us, or the anecdotal
> experiences of others, far greater in extent but coloured by
> possible bias, and sometimes hysterical anti-NT bias?
Well, you won't find any hysterical anti-NT bias in this post. I like
Linux, but see the value of NT quite clearly.
> Also, we are not experimenters or hackers. We use OSes for doing
> real-world work. If we purchase hardware or software and hear
> the vendor say quite explicitly that we are on our own with
> Linux, what kind of justification can we offer ourselves or our
> customers for the use of something this unsupported. Trust me,
> when the hardware vendor says he won't stand behind the use of
> Linux, we take that VERY seriously. --
Support is clearly important, and in some ways, NT support is better.
Certainly, there's more of it to be found if you've got the money to
purchase it. But there is support available for Linux too. I'm
not too familiar with it, but my understanding is that both Caldera
and Redhat sell support packages.
And with Linux, bugs get fixed, often much faster than with NT. Some
people in my department have had some rather ugly run-ins with NT
support when they attempted to report serious bugs in NT.
NT and Linux clearly have different sets of benefits and problems.
And maybe NT is the right thing for your business -- it certainly has
a lot more software created for it. But Linux has some distinct
advantages, including great stability in both OS and software, fast
development, low cost access to a wide variety of server software, and
a powerful community of people that provide some of the best support
possible. Support which happens to be free.
y
--
|--------/ Yaron M. Minsky \--------|
|--------\ http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/yminsky/ /--------|
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