[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
I'd like to take issue if I may, let's be fair!
good enough to share a corner with SuSE so I suppose we can say they support the concept! So where was Applix even if it does only seem to spell in Ameriglish; the only Corel Office was for 'doze, virtually nothing was web-based and many stands said, "the government don't specify it and none of the schools are asking for it."
That's the commercial world for you only supplying what people ask for! :-)
Or maybe people only ask for something they know a supplier supplys, or suppliers only keep records of equiries of things they supply.
Often a lot of the Windows stuff is a pig to deploy on networks too. i.e. you get told things to the effect of "we don't know what needs changing in C:\WINDOWS to get the program to work, but it's *easy* to just run the install program on every machine". Yep! you just run setup and off it goes. sometimes you need to restart the computer afterwards. Too easy by far. I suppose that you could write a batch file, as I did on our Novell server, and low, every machine that needed the program to be loaded got it, I only had to switch it on. Wow, that was hard!
So how do you get a batch file to supply the user input which SETUP.EXE is now sat there waiting for? The basic assumption of Windows setup programs is that someone, who knows what they are doing, is sat in front of the machine...
(Let alone such stupidity as programs which need write access to files to be able to open them.) That IS silly! :-)
It's a consequence of software producers only testing their software on stand alone machines. Remember that with commercial software, especially where there is some kind of "captive market", quality control isn't high on the list of priorities.
(IME with the latter catagory often the software vendor dosn't have much of a clue about how Windows works in the first place.) Don't know what IME means but... I bet your wife makes sure that you have a nice crisp white shirt ready to
I'm not married, so your bigoted analogy breaks anyway.
wear every morning and yet has no idea how the washing machine works, what chemicals are in the soap or what that triangle sign in the collar of the shirt really means. The workings SHOULD be transparent, that's progress.
A better analogy would be a car (or for that matter washing machine) manufacture who didn't supply service manuals.
So, how about making a point of enquiring loudly if the stands are supporting open-source (they often haven't got a clue!) when some piece of useful software catches your eye? Becta was encouraging in their support for multi-platform approaches but Capita (SIMS/EMS) 1) didn't know what I was talking about and then 2) when someone did they don't expect to make any changes.
That's interesting. When did you ask them this? Since I spoke to them of Thursday complaining about their effectivly forcing the use of Windows NT for the next version of SIMS. The idea that the "S in "SQL" is "standard" appears to be beyond people... (Managed to get them to admit that their being a "Microsoft Solutions Provider" might render them less that impartial.) They also ACTUALLY force one to use NT for mentor3 and capita are very keen on Fox Pro and have no idea what SQL is 'cus they don't use it! Also (by the way), Capita will not support 98 workstations but do support 95! even though they're more stable, and tell customers all sorts of scare stories (we've never had any probs.)
okay that's enough ranting, off to hear my boy read now.
Oh, sorry, there was a point, LINUX and windows ARE different, but as far as non technical users are concerned, LINUX has miles to go before it is easy to use, it's moving fast, but still has a way to go.
So far as *SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS* are concerned (which is what the original post was about) Windows has light years to go before it is as simple and straightforward as Linux. Even the oft repeated claim about Windows being easier to use, is suspect. Since Windows allows (even expects) non technical users to perform system administration tasks. (As well as doing a great many things which baffle the same people who which it is supposedly "easy to use". e.g. forgetting about network printers at random, remembering old passwords afther they have been changed, spewing up CPU registers in hex, etc.) Whilst Windows might be a good choice for the average, end user administered, "home" machine. Put it on a network with a system administrator and it becomes less than ideal. Indeed abilities such as the easy end user install of software then become a liability. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763