I think that Kuldip's views are often those who have more than a fair working knowledge of Windows and comparatively little know-how about unix and Linux in particular. I'm not sure that I would classify 'Windows' and in particular NT - 'Well documented'. Sure there are a lot of books....and there are many books about Linux....and in both cases you can never find one that explains exactly how and why to do what you want it to do. As an example - take roaming profiles on NT, then add Netmeeting and Outlook and try to apply all the various technet hotfixes in order to make them roam. And before someone asks me for the solution - then I confess that I STILL can't get it to work properly for all users.... I prefer rpm and typical Linux installations compared to Windows which always seem exceptionally tedious. It took 40 minutes to install an almost complete LINUX system with web broswers, wordperfect, Applix suite, Web server etc - and a couple of days to do the same on an NT server. (OK I now have a semi automatic script to rebuild the server - but it still requires more than a little hand configuring) As for charging for commercial products - I didn't pay for Star Office which seems pretty feature rich compared to Office 97 - and largely compatible too. For schools to spend a fortune on Microsoft products seems to be questionable given then dire shortage of cash in the Education system. If you start to 'wait' for Linux to become more friendly - then remember that expectations move on. There is always going to be a steep learning curve for technology that advances at the rate that IT changes are taking place. On Thu 17 Feb, Admin wrote:
I've spent a week or so messing around with Linux and I have reached the following conclusions.
1. Desktop looks good has some nice functions. 2. It's more resource hungry than windows (not less as the hype clams) 3. A step backwards when it comes to application and service install and setup. 4. Poorly documented. 5. Seems to offer nothing over windows expect the price tag, (which isn't much if you already have a network) and commercial companies will still have to charge for applications.
To conclude I think my time would be better spent developing my NT skills at present and waiting until linux advances into a more user friendly operating system.
Kuldip Singh.
-- Alan Davies Head of Computing Birkenhead School