I work for CSBSJU, and we are mostly a Windoz shop. That said, I happen to be the sole linux admin in charge of our Linux systems. Several academic departments use Linux, so I maintain their desktops and file/account servers. Our DNS servers are Linux and I maintain moodle on Linux. (very nice Open Source course management software) Currently I use Fedora on our desktop systems, and I am in the process of switching from Fedora 7 to Fedora 9 for the coming school year. All my servers run Red Hat Enterprise Linux since it is supported by VMWare ESX and on HP servers (more importantly our HP SANs). Since RHEL is derived from Fedora (at least version 5+), and since I use Fedora, when a new RHEL comes out I'm already used to how it functions since I use Fedora. (RHEL 5 is based on Fedora Core 5, which was our desktop environment 2 years ago)
Beyond the fact that Fedora and RHEL are intimately intertwined, I like the fact that Fedora strives to be pure GPLv2 compliant. I'm a strong believer in OSS software, but I'm not quite at the extreme that debian is. For example, Red Hat trademarks the Fedora logo and Fedora includes Firefox with trademarks. Although I understand debian's perspective of a completely free distro with no trademarks, it is easier for students to acclimate to Linux when they see Firefox since that is a known browser to them. Obviously I could explain to them that iceweasal is in fact firefox, but that kind of detracts from the credit that mozilla and firefox deserve. In some cases, using Firefox on my Linux systems might be the first time a student uses Firefox. Since I believe in OSS software, I like the fact that a Windows/Mac user can use Firefox on any operating system he/she chooses (well, any operating system a normal user would use anyway....) The same goes for OpenOffice. It is really sweet that if a student uses OpenOffice on my Linux system and then wants to work on the document on his/her personal computer, he/she can simply install OpenOffice for free. If that student wants his/her mom/sister/brother/friend to review a paper he/she wrote, he/she can send that paper in an open format to that person and he/she can use OpenOffice to read and edit it for free. The truth is, the applications determine what OS a users uses, so if one day a Windows user ends up using OpenOffice/Firefox/Thunderbird/Pidgin, then a switch to Linux (or Mac OS X, or FreeBSD, or ....) is actually pretty seamless. The fact that Fedora doesn't include any type of non-free repositories is also nice, since it is an extremely good conversation starter. Although it unfortunately turns many users to use Ubuntu. Quite generally my conversations with users go like this: User: "I tried to install Fedora, but that didn't go well. Then I tried ubuntu and everything worked, like my video card." Me: *Long explanation behind the difference between free and GPLv2 software, and about things like software patents (leads to lack of MP3 support)* The ironic thing is if these users knew about the livna repositories, or other repos, then they could use all those non-free bits easily. So, in the end the user finds out why Fedora is how it is, which I think is good, because most people have no idea why Fedora doesn't have binary drivers or mp3 support. However, it also really sucks since all my users are now Ubuntu users instead of Fedora users. It's not that I don't think they should use Ubuntu, it's just that I know a lot about Fedora, so it is easier for me to help people with it. On my list of things to do is to get better acquainted with Ubuntu for that reason. I also use Gentoo on one of our HPC clusters. It is a 16 node x86 beowulf cluster which I built while I was a comp. sci. research student at CSBSJU. I used gentoo for two reasons: Everything is complied for the specific CPU architecture with full optimizations and I could install a very bare metal install. Gentoo uses portage as its package manager, so it is possible to set flags that control how software is compiled from source. That is nice, since I can do things like exclude cups (printing) support from everything I build. I think that portage is very sweet since it can build customized systems straight from source, but for the most part that power adds too much complexity for most people. Our other HPC cluster is an 8 node dual processor x86_64 I built a year or two ago. I built it using Fedora and its clustering support. (7 of the nodes are diskless) At home I use either Fedora or Windoz XP. I find it is useful for me to use Windows, since supporting it is half of my job. I'm only 50% a Linux admin, the rest of the time I work with Windoz web systems, and I'm the SharePoint administrator for CSBSJU. Whenever I'm in Windows I always use Firefox as my primary web browser, except for things like SharePoint. My primary desktop at work is Fedora, but I also remote desktop to my Windoz box which is essentially a dedicated Outlook/SharePoint box. I also use it when I need to deal with Office documents. As I mentioned, I'm a big believer in OSS software. That comes from my experience as an admin and home desktop software user. I hate dealing with Microsoft products, and other proprietary software in general. There are at least 5-10 major problems with sharepoint that I can list off-hand that should be fixed ASAP. However, MS won't do it. That type of disrespect for the user community with open source software either wouldn't happen, or the source code would end up getting forked to people who can do a better job. I've had similar dealings with citrix, where they won't release fixes for the Linux client, even though there are fairly painful bugs that need to be fixed. Whenever I encounter a problem with fedora, or any other open source project, I like the fact that I can track down the problem myself and either report it or check on its status. A few weeks ago a bug with fedora's core utils package messed up tcsh. I tracked down the problem, went to fedora's bugzilla, where I found several ways to fix the problem. I picked one, and now I'm set. With Microsoft, I'd be on the phone for hours, or I'd have to wait 2 months until some random KB article came out. Then I'd have to call HP (our windows support provider) and request that they get the necessary fix for me from Microsoft, since MS doesn't like to release most of its bug fixes to the general public. With open source software, I really like being able to fix problems myself and collaborate with others. I also like the fact that I can install and use the same software at home as I do at work. To license MOSS 2007 (Microsoft office sharepoint server) for home use would be ridiculous. Sure I have tons of windows and sharepoint skills, but I can't use them at home or with people that have a limited budget. That really irks me, because I like using my skills for my own purposes and to help my friends. I haven't ventured much into Vista land yet, since we don't use vista at all. Apparently Windows Vista and XP roaming profiles can't coexist, so it appears we won't be moving to a new version of windows until Windows 7 comes out. I use Windows 2003 servers, but haven't touched 2008 yet. Basically we were told by our Windows 2008 trainers that unless an application is certified to be 100% 2008 compliant, either don't run it on 2008 or test the crap out of it. Since we don't have time to mess with stuff like that, 2008 has gone from exciting to useless for us. So I doubt I will be working with 2008 anytime soon. Jason _______________________________________________ scalug-list mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/scalug-list
