Share your preferred bsd or linux distribution which is not FreeBSD.

[Sam The Ripper]

Maybe. Let's assume this is true. I still don't understand why I have to mess with Linux, when:

I'm starting to say that everyone should use the tool he's more comfortable with. So if you're not comfortable with Linux, that's fine. But bashing Linux by saying something not true is not a right approach.

- Oracle left a loophole in Solaris license, so I can use it for free,

Solaris is dead. Please, stop talking about zombies. It sad to see it gone, really. But that's how it is.
Oracle fired the majority of SPARC and Solaris teams and they are not working on any release anymore, with the silly excuse of releasing it with a Continuous Delivery model, that actually didn't produce any real improvement but bug fixes.
Oracle is just keeping it commercially alive enough to milk their customers until 2034.
There is no reason to run Solaris anymore, unless you just want it. Even from a technical point of view, since Linux reached and now is even superior in performance.
And I'm not the one who assert that. Brendan Gregg said it, and he's one of the most prominent DTrace and Performance engineers in the world, who worked at Sun and later at Joyent, before start working with Linux at Netflix and now Intel.
Even Oracle now is pushing their Linux distro more than they are pushing Solaris. They even ported DTrace to it.

- I have FreeBSD, which - from my brief interaction with it - looks almost as good as Solaris,

Yes, you're right here. FreeBSD is just nowadays as good as Solaris. And it is another reason for not deploying Solaris anymore.
What is really missing is a more comfortable jail management tool like zoneadm/zonecfg. But I think it will be there when PkgBase will be completed. After all, Solaris zone management became really good only after the introduction of IPS.
I think it's also missing something like FMA, but maybe here I'm wrong and developers can correct my statement.

- we have other alternatives, such as OpenIndiana, NetBSD, GhostBSD,

OpenIndiana? Seriously? Come on...
There is still someone who believes in the dream of illumos?
OpenIndiana was never near to what Project Indiana really was. It's just OpenSolaris 2010.05 with MATE instead of GNOME 2.x, with most consolidations ported from the open source parts of Oracle Solaris, but with an illumos kernel under the hood since b151.
Alasdair Lumsden, the founder of OpenIndiana, abandoned the project, and now there are few guys who are running it in an eternal beta stage called Hipster. SFE is dead and the main repository lacked of a lot of useful desktop applications.
And illumos is just what the ONNV_b146 (the last public build of OpenSolaris) was. There is no real innovation, no real improvements neither from performance point of view nor from technical point of view.
Even Solaris 11 went beyond that, and ZFS developers had to created OpenZFS to save it from the vegetative state of illumos.
There is no real commercial backing behind it. Delphix migrated to Linux. Joyent is no more. OmniTI stopped being involved with illumos almost 10 years ago. Nexenta stopped being publicly involved with illumos because it sells its own closed source solution.
There is only Oxide nowadays.
Oracle introduced ZFS encryption in Solaris 11 Express, in late 2010. illumos couldn't even develop something like that, even when at that time commercial entities were "founding" the project. ZFS encryption was developed in ZFSonLinux, that became the reference implementation of OpenZFS.

Linux is way better than this, to be honest.
About NetBSD, I really like it. It was my favourite BSD for years (now I prefer OpenBSD), but I'm failing to see how it can be better than Linux.
Well, it's technically better designed from a portability point of view (I seriously love build.sh), since this was not Linux initial goal, but nowadays there are more embedded Linux out there than embedded NetBSD installations.
That said, I think NetBSD released some really interesting projects, like RUMP. And I'm a big fan of unikernels.

- with a little tuning, like killing automatic updates and such nonsense, Windows is rock-solid

Yes, that's true.

, and I can do virtually anything on it that is possible on Linux.

On the desktop side Windows can do even more than Linux, since desktop Linux is a mess. And it will always be like that for multiple reasons.
On the server side, though, this is a joke that is not funny.

Not vice-versa, as WinServer has built-in type-1 hypervisor,

Is there seriously anyone in 2024 who is still debating about KVM not being a "pure" type 1 hypervisor, even when there are WAY MORE mission critical KVM deployments than Hyper-V out there?
What are you losing with KVM from it being a type1-2 hybrid? Features? No. Security? No. Perfomance? Hell, no.
Then again, if you want an enterprise-grade hypervisor for your workloads and you're not a hobbyist, your best bet would be still vSphere, even after VMware being bought by Broadcom. It's just the best hypervisor out there, and everything else in the x86 space can only running behind it for the foreseeable future.

and resilient, self-healing storage (ReFS with integrity streams on Storage Spaces)

ReFS is just an another half-assed alternative of ZFS. And no one who is sane enough to choose a storage solution would choose it as such.
It's just a traditional file system with CoW and snapshots capabilities. It's even inferior than BTRFS, which pales as well in comparison of ZFS.
Also, integrity streams feature is not about self-healing. It is just on the fly scrubbing. And it is a mostly useless feature on a server/workstation, since scrubbing greatly impacts I/O performance, and it is something usually done at specific intervals at storage-level.
There is no something like self-healing in file system, unless you're deploying it on top of a RAID with its parity and by using ECC memories to avoid errors in the I/O pipeline.
So ReFS is not doing any black magic that both ZFS or BTRFS can't do. In fact, it is doing less, since ZFS and BTRFS have RAID capabilities built-in and therefore scrubbing can actually fix corruption, while ReFS without Storage Spaces would just calculate the checksum and block the access to the file, just like BTRFS would do. Heck, even APFS in modern Apple devices can do that much.

Storage Spaces also is a way inferior solution than LVM+RAID. Do you need to partition your Volume Group, to make use of LUNs aggregation without losing flexibility? Well, bad news for you, pal. You can't. Just format it with NTFS/ReFS and use it as a single volume. Useful, really useful, if all you want to do is playing. Then again, it's also true that if you would run something serious, you wouldn't deploy Windows Server in the first place.
Do you know why Storage Spaces were developed? Because in Windows there was no capability of LUNs aggregation.
Every LUNs had to be considered as a different volume. Did you need more space? You had to enlarge the LUN(s) and prey God that the multipath service wouldn't complain about the change of the volume(s) it was managing.
In Linux/AIX/HP-UX? You could just create another LUN in the same masking group and you were good to go. You just had to enlarge your VG and forget about anything else.

with shadow copies,

VSS was never a good snapshot solution when not backed by a real storage, which provides snapshots with volume replication capabilities.
And when you're backing it with a storage, VSS is just a graphical frontend with no real advantages, since all the dirty work is done by the latter under the hood.
The usefulness of VSS is more related to how Windows can help you managing your files client-side. And that's why I agree with you that Windows is a better desktop OS than Linux.

dedup

This is not something you should do server/workstation-side, since dedup is I/O intensive and it can (and it does) compromise the performance. Especially since the majority of instances of Windows are virtualized.
And even when they would be physical they wouldn't have enough I/O bandwith capabilities to perform deduplication without impacts.
Even BTRFS can do dedup. And since both of ReFS and BTRFS are NOT SAN-based storage solutions that feature is useless.
Deduplication shall ALWAYS be done at storage-level.

wide customization options

Telling that Windows is more customizable than Linux is outragerous at best. Even for a server configuration.
Stop with the FUD, please.

and advanced performance (tiers or/and mirror-accelerated parity).

Again, ReFS and Storage Spaces are useful only when scaling your local storage. They are not a NAS/SAN alternatives.
You shouldn't care about parity at server/workstation-level, because that kind of performance tuning should be done at storage-level. Your NAS/SAN should care about parity, not Windows or Linux servers.
That said, what you're calling Mirror Allocation Parity is just RAID50 (but with the name not decided by the marketing department), something that you could do in Linux even 25 years ago.
And Storage Tiers (another marketable name) are nothing special. You can mix SSDs and HDDs in RAID in Linux. You could even make asymmetric arrays if you want.
But, again, this is not something you should care at server/workstaton-level. Let the storage do this kind of stuff.

Maybe my opinion was too harsh and Linux is not a complete disaster, but there are many better options to choose from, both paid and free.

Linux is not a disaster at all. You're not harsh, you're just misinformed.
And there are no "better" alternatives. There are alternatives. What makes them better is the kind of workload you're going to deploy on your server.
Don't get me wrong, Linux has its own share of problems and quirks, but it is still miles ahead of Windows Server, which was always a sub-optimal solution, forcefully deployed in data centers mostly due to Active Directory, Sharepoint and custom ASP.NET websites.
Windows Server always suffered of scalability and performance issues. It was always beaten by commercial UNIXes first and Open Source UNIXes (*BSD and Linux) later. Even Microsoft replaced it in most of its mission-critical parts of Azure, with its own Linux-based OS.

And look, I'm not a Linux guy. My daily driver is a MacBook Air M2, my Lenovo x270 runs OpenBSD-current, my Pinebook Pro runs NetBSD 10-STABLE and my NAS runs FreeBSD 14.1. I also bought a server yesterday, which will run FreeBSD.
Also, I'm a Solaris guy. I always considered Solaris as the best thing since sliced bread. But still your statements are just plain false.

 

[zazlox]

In BSD world i use GhostBSD and in Linux world i use Voidlinux.

 

[jb1277976]

Gentoo Linux.. I used it before coming back to FreeBSD.. i should be using more ports cause i was used to compiling

 

[Alain De Vos]

Solaris & Openindiana are dead.

 

[DrJuanNadie]

Siduction (based on Debian Sid -Unstable-, which is very stable, at least as stable as Arch). It's like using Arch but, I think, better, because the software availability is greater without having to compile anything.

 

[Deleted member 81054]

There is no reason to run Solaris anymore, unless you just want it. Even from a technical point of view, since Linux reached and now is even superior in performance.

That's ignorant of business decisions made every day!

When an enterprise has a significant investment in a particular tool, the costs associated with switching to a NEW tool -- regardless of how "superior" it's advocates may claim it to be -- often overwhelms the cost of maintaining an OBSOLETE tool.

I have a colleague who is constantly on the hunt for old Sun iron. Because his employer's enterprise runs ENTIRELY on apps developed to run under Solaris and on SPARC hardware. You can try to convince the employer otherwise (as he has tried, on numerous occasions) but, when the employer shows you the actual dollars required to make such a changeover -- and asks if you would like to forego your salary for the next several years in order to finance that upgrade -- it's awfully hard to present a counter-argument IN DOLLARS AND CENTS.

The last time I migrated from one windows version to another cost me around $50K. New licenses, time/opportunities lost, applications/hosts/peripherals no longer supported, etc. Have I recovered $50K as a result of that "upgrade"? Has it made me considerably more efficient in dong my job? Can I write code or design hardware any quicker?

When your time has zero value, then changes have no costs. But, that isn't typically true in the business world.

 

[drr]

Before switching to FreeBSD, I have distro-hopped for some years and settled in Arch Linux because of the wiki and the possibility of setting up a system the way I want. But that experience deteriorated over time with multiple services managing boot, networking, etc. (read systemd) and that's when I searched for an alternative and found FreeBSD.

 

[chrislongros]

Arch Linux btw

 

[Espionage724]

Fedora for SELinux and openSUSE Tumbleweed for rolling. Windows 10 LTSC for getting stuff done

 

[rbranco]

Fedora for SELinux and openSUSE Tumbleweed for rolling. Windows 10 LTSC for getting stuff done

openSUSE Tumbleweed switched to SELinux this year btw.,

 

[Alain De Vos]

Mostly i boot FreeBSD.
But second preferred is artix-linux. [Arch without systemd]
For printing i'm forced to use MX-linux(debian), only drivers for my brother printer.
What is your distro ?

I switched from artix-linux to "redcore-linux" which is a great gentoo-derivative. It means I can compile programs from source like poudriere on freebsd. Compilation is even faster. I can also print duplex on my brother printer.

 

[grafi]

Debian and Slackware. I know those two well.
Now I take my baby steps in freebsd

 

[Sam The Ripper]

That's ignorant of business decisions made every day!

When an enterprise has a significant investment in a particular tool, the costs associated with switching to a NEW tool -- regardless of how "superior" it's advocates may claim it to be -- often overwhelms the cost of maintaining an OBSOLETE tool.

I have a colleague who is constantly on the hunt for old Sun iron. Because his employer's enterprise runs ENTIRELY on apps developed to run under Solaris and on SPARC hardware. You can try to convince the employer otherwise (as he has tried, on numerous occasions) but, when the employer shows you the actual dollars required to make such a changeover -- and asks if you would like to forego your salary for the next several years in order to finance that upgrade -- it's awfully hard to present a counter-argument IN DOLLARS AND CENTS.

The last time I migrated from one windows version to another cost me around $50K. New licenses, time/opportunities lost, applications/hosts/peripherals no longer supported, etc. Have I recovered $50K as a result of that "upgrade"? Has it made me considerably more efficient in dong my job? Can I write code or design hardware any quicker?

When your time has zero value, then changes have no costs. But, that isn't typically true in the business world.

This is called technical debt. And THIS is the ignorant business decision.
That employer you're talking about is just as stupid as everyone who can think they can delay the evolution of their applications just to SAVE some dollars.
And NO, they are not SAVING ANYTHING, because Solaris and SPARC are dead platforms, so the money you THINK you're savings, you're going to spend in paying people to run that platform and consultancy.
And since Solaris is nowadays a non common OS, you're going to pay every year more to get things still running.
That's why more and more banks are trying to get away from COBOL, by migrate their applications to Java.
And after Oracle will pull the plug off, you're going to spend WAY MORE dollars to make that application ported to a more modern technology stack, because then migration will become MANDATORY.

In my career I faced a lot of this kind of customers.
My previous employer was stubborn to leave AIX to migrate to Linux, despite he couldn't hire NO ONE with a normal salary because every people in that salary range he interviewed just known Linux.
So he literally WASTED money in running AIX for years. Now, because the HQ of the group made mandatory to leave any commercial UNIX system, he had to migrate to Linux.

So, stop wasting time and MONEY in buying hardware that is not going to provide long term value anymore.
FreeBSD and Linux nowadays provides anything you need. There is no justification in spending money in something that is going to be decommissioned.

And if you think I'm a Linux fanboy you're wrong. I love Solaris and AIX.
But they are gone. And we need to move on.

 

[Deleted member 81054]

This is called technical debt. And THIS is the ignorant business decision.
That employer you're talking about is just as stupid as everyone who can think they can delay the evolution of their applications just to SAVE some dollars.

Yet, he's done quite well -- keeping his business MONOPOLY for ~40 years. Prove to him that rejiggering his enterprise software is going to MAKE him more money... he already knows how much his approach has made for him!

In my career I faced a lot of this kind of customers.
My previous employer was stubborn to leave AIX to migrate to Linux, despite he couldn't hire NO ONE with a normal salary because every people in that salary range he interviewed just known Linux.
So he literally WASTED money in running AIX for years. Now, because the HQ of the group made mandatory to leave any commercial UNIX system, he had to migrate to Linux.

You ignore secondary costs. I haven't upgraded my Windows (7) hardware or software for almost 10 years. Yet, there is nothing that I can't do with it. And, I have spent ZERO time and ZERO dollars -- installing upgrades, updating licenses, etc. Because I know what the costs to me are to have to update any of these things.

Of course, I tend to start with better ... EVERYTHING. Unlike folks who want their tools to cost nothing. I have many bits of kit that are $20K+ each. because I knew, when purchasing them, that they would MAKE me far more than they cost me.

I ran UNIX on a "personal mainframe" in 1985 -- while the rest of the world was struggling to deal with 286's. My first PCs cost $8K -- each (times two).

A week of my time cost in excess of $5K; how many weeks should I spend "upgrading" software or hardware -- to save, what?

If you are a business, and you have employees, you have to factor the time/effort to retrain them to use any "new" system. And, the cost of any errors they might make BECAUSE of its newness. These issues tend to be ignored by folks who just focus on the technology. "What will it BUY me? What will it COST me -- the extended costs, not just the cost of parts?"

I worked at a local non-profit. They had many nurses who volunteered their time. At one point, they asked to have their "rooms" swapped with some other rooms in the facility. When the Director asked them what benefits would acrues from the $5K cost of the effort, they were dumbfounded! Did they think there would be no cost to reshuffling all of that material? Were THEY going to physically move everything around? For zero dollars? And, how would the occupants of those other rooms be impacted? "Sure we can do it! But, tell me WHY its going to SAVE us more than it COSTS us?"

Decades ago, we brought in an MRP system. The goal was to move to JIT manufacturing. The savings, there, are quantifiable: if you can reduce the amount of material you have in inventory, then those are dollars you don't have to borrow OR dollars that you can invest in other aspects of your operation. Simple decision, right? Ah, but EVERYONE in the company had to buy into that new way of thinking. If you needed 13 hours to complete your task on a product, the guy downstream from you EXPECTED it from you in 13 hours. Telling him that you needed 14 -- or 16 (to cover your ass) -- was unacceptable. Because EVERYONE would adopt a similar strategy. As a result, every person in the company (including the folks on the assembly line) had to go to school to get this drilled into their thinking. Imagine throwing away a few days pay -- FOR YOUR WHOLE COMPANY -- to adopt a new way of doing business.

Tech folks tend to only see what's in front of them. Ever ask yourself what your burden rate is? And, WHY??

 

[Sam The Ripper]

Yet, he's done quite well -- keeping his business MONOPOLY for ~40 years. Prove to him that rejiggering his enterprise software is going to MAKE him more money... he already knows how much his approach has made for him!

Being a good entrepreneur is not the same as being a good technology leader.
The guy you're describing can be the best entrepreneur, but still he's a man who is wasting money in buying OLD hardware despite it could be decommissioned in a future SRU from Oracle. A very shortsighted decision, especially since the risk of being out of support.
Sorry, but your excuses are not working here.

You ignore secondary costs. I haven't upgraded my Windows (7) hardware or software for almost 10 years. Yet, there is nothing that I can't do with it. And, I have spent ZERO time and ZERO dollars -- installing upgrades, updating licenses, etc. Because I know what the costs to me are to have to update any of these things.

No, YOU are the one who are ignoring them.
You're just telling us that ignoring 20 YEARS of technology evolution to save a bunch of dollars in the short term, when you still HAVE TO (it's not an option) spend them later, is a smart move, but you're not calculating what is called TCO - TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP in maintaining it in the long run.

If you are a business, and you have employees, you have to factor the time/effort to retrain them to use any "new" system. And, the cost of any errors they might make BECAUSE of its newness. These issues tend to be ignored by folks who just focus on the technology. "What will it BUY me? What will it COST me -- the extended costs, not just the cost of parts?"

Plain false. I don't ignore anything.
Every cost of this is absolutely calculated. And it costs LESS then maintaining a platform where the medium range of age of the personnel who can maintain it is around the retirement, since you can spread your costs across multiple years as CAPEX, instead of paying it as OPEX.
Show me how you can save money when you'll have to hire younger people who don't know Solaris. And show me the cost of training them in a technology where they can't even find online help on Google, because fewer and fewer people are using it. And THIS COST is OPEX, it cannot be CAPEX.

I worked at a local non-profit. They had many nurses who volunteered their time. At one point, they asked to have their "rooms" swapped with some other rooms in the facility. When the Director asked them what benefits would acrues from the $5K cost of the effort, they were dumbfounded! Did they think there would be no cost to reshuffling all of that material? Were THEY going to physically move everything around? For zero dollars? And, how would the occupants of those other rooms be impacted? "Sure we can do it! But, tell me WHY its going to SAVE us more than it COSTS us?"

This is not proving anything.
This is just proving that people can't make a serious analysis about the benefits of doing that. Or maybe there was no benefit at all in doing that, and that was just a personal preference.

Decades ago, we brought in an MRP system. The goal was to move to JIT manufacturing. The savings, there, are quantifiable: if you can reduce the amount of material you have in inventory, then those are dollars you don't have to borrow OR dollars that you can invest in other aspects of your operation. Simple decision, right? Ah, but EVERYONE in the company had to buy into that new way of thinking. If you needed 13 hours to complete your task on a product, the guy downstream from you EXPECTED it from you in 13 hours. Telling him that you needed 14 -- or 16 (to cover your ass) -- was unacceptable. Because EVERYONE would adopt a similar strategy. As a result, every person in the company (including the folks on the assembly line) had to go to school to get this drilled into their thinking. Imagine throwing away a few days pay -- FOR YOUR WHOLE COMPANY -- to adopt a new way of doing business.

Again. You're describing bad planned scenarios just to excuse the technical debt.
If people needed more time to make their work right, then the adoption plan was fucked up to begin with.
If you don't know how to migrate from a piece of tech to another, call a specialist to help you, instead of doing it yourself.

Tech folks tend to only see what's in front of them. Ever ask yourself what your burden rate is? And, WHY??

This is not about being tech folks.
This is about doing your homework.
And sorry, but to me the situations you're describing are caused by incompetent people. Not because of technology.

 

[Deleted member 81054]

Being a good entrepreneur is not the same as being a good technology leader.
The guy you're describing can be the best entrepreneur, but still he's a man who is wasting money in buying OLD hardware despite it could be decommissioned in a future SRU from Oracle. A very shortsighted decision, especially since the risk of being out of support.
Sorry, but your excuses are not working here.

He's got annual sales of $300M. And a ONE man IT department. Wow, he must be doing something incredibly wrong to have such high overhead and low profits -- NOT!

People are in business to make money -- not be "technology leaders". Edsel was ahead of its time. How did THAT work out?

You're just telling us that ignoring 20 YEARS of technology evolution to save a bunch of dollars in the short term, when you still HAVE TO (it's not an option) spend them later, is a smart move, but you're not calculating what is called TCO - TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP in maintaining it in the long run.

He's been in business for more than 40 years. So, he's likely "ignored" far more than you can imagine. Yet, has thrived. He could have adopted the "lets update every FEW years technology model and just spent all that time and money on hardware that would (by your thinking) have been obsolete a few years later. The dollars are saved in the short AND long term. By not risking your business on updates that add no value -- other than to say you are running the latest and greatest software/hardware. ("And how does that translate to my BOTTOM LINE?")

Show me how you can save money when you'll have to hire younger people who don't know Solaris. And show me the cost of training them in a technology where they can't even find online help on Google, because fewer and fewer people are using it. And THIS COST is OPEX, it cannot be CAPEX.

"Show me how you can save money when you'll have to hire younger people who don't know <pick-your-OS-and-application-set>; especially when that keeps changing with the 'latest' fads."

Perl was all over the place, years ago. Java. Python, today. Where will any of them be in 5 years? Do you simply decide to recreate your entire enterprise because a choice you made at one time in the past is no longer "fashionable"? Because some button-pusher fresh out of school doesn't have the smarts to make sense of it?

Real businesses don't rely on search engines to solve their problems. They invest in personnel to do that. (McDonald's invests nothing in its people, thus their systems are designed for the least capabilities)

This is not proving anything.

It proves that there are costs that most folks are unaware of.

When I make a pitch to a new client, they often balk at my hourly rate. Because they don't actually know what THEIR people cost them! "Sure, you pay them $50/hr. But, they also get 10 holidays each year (for which they are paid yet produce no work), 10 (minimum) paid vacation days (ditto), you have to provide a space for them to work, heat/air conditioning, lights. Bathroom facilities. Parking -- and lighting therein. Snow removal service. Landscaping. Equipment for them to do their job. Maintenance on each of those things. Liability insurance in case someone trips and falls on the premises (even if they aren't an employee). Where do those costs go? Do I not have similar expenses? I'm talking to you (client) today. I may not get any work out of this interaction. How does THAT time get compensated?

Most IT departments are pure bloat. They enjoy the ~3-year update cycle because it's job assurance. They don't see their costs are pure overhead -- they don't "produce" anything! And, they don't see the costs to other employees that have to learn new things -- that don't appreciably increase their productivity.

When it's YOUR money, you think really hard about how you spend it. What's this going to get me for what it's LIKELY going to cost me?

When you're an employee, there's no skin off your back. The boss doesn't come in and say, "There won't be any raises, this year, because we spent all that money on software/hardware upgrades. But, aren't you all pleased with your nice new workstations??"

Again. You're describing bad planned scenarios just to excuse the technical debt.
If people needed more time to make their work right, then the adoption plan was fucked up to begin with.
If you don't know how to migrate from a piece of tech to another, call a specialist to help you, instead of doing it yourself.

You mean, like the folks who designed the technology you are adopting? Or, is everyone incompetent in your universe?

This is not about being tech folks.
This is about doing your homework.
And sorry, but to me the situations you're describing are caused by incompetent people. Not because of technology.

Yes, DOING YOUR HOMEWORK. Putting a REAL dollar figure on the costs instead of listening to an IT person who is likely clueless and just wants to chase -CURRENT. Folks think technology is a magic bullet. It is far from that. Smart people understand its costs and limitations and don't act like lemmings.

 

[Sam The Ripper]

He's got annual sales of $300M. And a ONE man IT department. Wow, he must be doing something incredibly wrong to have such high overhead and low profits -- NOT!

People are in business to make money -- not be "technology leaders". Edsel was ahead of its time. How did THAT work out?

Business people don't decide about technology. CTOs do.
That said, this is you example of business? A small sized company with just one IT guy?
Dude, did you ever work in real enterprise-scale IT department?

He's been in business for more than 40 years. So, he's likely "ignored" far more than you can imagine. Yet, has thrived. He could have adopted the "lets update every FEW years technology model and just spent all that time and money on hardware that would (by your thinking) have been obsolete a few years later. The dollars are saved in the short AND long term. By not risking your business on updates that add no value -- other than to say you are running the latest and greatest software/hardware. ("And how does that translate to my BOTTOM LINE?")

Yes, he thrived by buying used hardware without caring for support and without caring for security and patching.
What an example for the IT.
When Solaris will be phased out, we'll see how much money he'll have to spend to migrate.
Then please came here again to tell us how much visionary this entrepreneur was.

"Show me how you can save money when you'll have to hire younger people who don't know <pick-your-OS-and-application-set>; especially when that keeps changing with the 'latest' fads."

It costs you way less money since younger people are way more eager to learn new things and learn faster than people who are going to retire soon.
Also, you can find way more people who know that technology and so they costs you less in terms of salary, instead of relying on niche and old technology.

Perl was all over the place, years ago. Java. Python, today. Where will any of them be in 5 years? Do you simply decide to recreate your entire enterprise because a choice you made at one time in the past is no longer "fashionable"? Because some button-pusher fresh out of school doesn't have the smarts to make sense of it?

Are you seriously comparing Java, that is a language known all around the world and used in the enterprise since 20 years, with SPARC/Solaris that is fading out and is becoming a niche business like COBOL?
And as I said before, banks are trying to get away from COBOL.

Real businesses don't rely on search engines to solve their problems. They invest in personnel to do that. (McDonald's invests nothing in its people, thus their systems are designed for the least capabilities)

You never worked in IT if you think that a sysadmin don't make use of Google. It's clear as a day.
And please, don't talk about real businesses, if all of your examples are companies that have only one guy in their IT dep.

It proves that there are costs that most folks are unaware of.

No, it proves that you are talking about things that have nothing to do with the topic.

When I make a pitch to a new client, they often balk at my hourly rate. Because they don't actually know what THEIR people cost them! "Sure, you pay them $50/hr. But, they also get 10 holidays each year (for which they are paid yet produce no work), 10 (minimum) paid vacation days (ditto), you have to provide a space for them to work, heat/air conditioning, lights. Bathroom facilities. Parking -- and lighting therein. Snow removal service. Landscaping. Equipment for them to do their job. Maintenance on each of those things. Liability insurance in case someone trips and falls on the premises (even if they aren't an employee). Where do those costs go? Do I not have similar expenses? I'm talking to you (client) today. I may not get any work out of this interaction. How does THAT time get compensated?

Again. The example you made proved nothing but a bad planning or a non existent necessity to begin with.

Most IT departments are pure bloat. They enjoy the ~3-year update cycle because it's job assurance. They don't see their costs are pure overhead -- they don't "produce" anything! And, they don't see the costs to other employees that have to learn new things -- that don't appreciably increase their productivity.

No, they upgrade because IT is part of their business.
And staying up date is the only way to avoid wasting money in fixing technical debt.

When it's YOUR money, you think really hard about how you spend it. What's this going to get me for what it's LIKELY going to cost me?

When you're an employee, there's no skin off your back. The boss doesn't come in and say, "There won't be any raises, this year, because we spent all that money on software/hardware upgrades. But, aren't you all pleased with your nice new workstations??"

If you don't have money to pay your employees because you spent them in hardware, you are in bankruptcy.
And not because of IT, but because your business is a failure.

You mean, like the folks who designed the technology you are adopting? Or, is everyone incompetent in your universe?

You're incompetent if you made an adoption plan without having the skills to do that.

Yes, DOING YOUR HOMEWORK. Putting a REAL dollar figure on the costs instead of listening to an IT person who is likely clueless and just wants to chase -CURRENT. Folks think technology is a magic bullet. It is far from that. Smart people understand its costs and limitations and don't act like lemmings.

Smart people don't buy used old hardware and run unsupported stuff putting their business at risk.

 

[Deleted member 81054]

Business people don't decide about technology. CTOs do.
That said, this is you example of business? A small sized company with just one IT guy?

A 300 million dollar company that manages to get along with just one IT guy! How many should it have? At what cost? How much MORE business will those extra staff (and updated kit) bring in??

A CTO reports to the CEO. Just because he recommends a particular course of action is no guarantee that the CEO will adopt it. Or, will fund it.

Yes, he thrived by buying used hardware without caring for support and without caring for security and patching.

He had support -- from his IT guy. Security? If the enterprise network isn't exposed to the outside world, his only attack surface is exposed to staff. Linux+++++ sure won't protect against insider theft (of secrets, funds, etc.)

You make lots of assumptions about "business" likely based on just YOUR experience. Or, whatever the lemmings are proposing this week.

And please, don't talk about real businesses, if all of your examples are companies that have only one guy in their IT dep.

Wow, what arrogance. How big is YOUR company? I mean the one with "Sam" on the front of the store? Yet you want to poo-poo someone who has been VERY successful by defying the mantras you espouse. Threatened by his success? Afraid other firms will abandon the regular update mantra??

Again. The example you did proved nothing but a bad planning or a non existent necessity to begin with.

This is a non sequitir. Did you actually read what I wrote? What SPECIFICALLY is the "bad planning"? "Non existent necessity"? I described the factors that go into a BURDENED rate.

No, they upgrade because IT is part of their business.
And staying up date is the only way to avoid wasting money in fixing technical debt.

IT is only as large a part of their business as they make it or allow it to be.

I'm an engineer. My business is ENTIRELY technology driven. All of my tools (hardware and software) are examples of advanced technology. Yet I spend *zero* dollars on that technology. Because I determine the cost-benefit analysis of the technology I choose to employ.

I spent $3K on AutoCAD in the late 80's -- because I was going to take on a project that could benefit from the use of 3D CAD Modeling. I spent $25K on an In-Circuit Emulator a few years later to design some particular hardware/software. Another $10K on yet another emulator a few years after that. $15K on an EPROM programmer. Tens of kilobucks on various EDA packages.

Each investment was made with the knowledge of how it would pay for itself. I've chosen not to upgrade ANY of them -- because they still provide the functionality they provided when I first purchased them. The only hazard is the OS that keeps wanting to be changed.

I designed a board for a client some years ago. Gave him everything to reproduce AND MAINTAIN my work. A "new hire" convinced him to upgrade the PCB layout package (a few kilobucks). Oops! Turns out the new version won't read the files from the old version! Surely not MY fault for failing to predict the future. OTOH, his new hire failed to DO HIS HOMEWORK about the EXISTING products that he would be supporting... because he was blinded by the sparkling lights!

If you don't have money to pay your employees because you spent them in hardware, you are in bankruptcy.
And not because of IT, but because your business is a failure.

If you are spending money on upgrades simply because that' the "common belief", then all of your competitors are similarly burdened. Those costs get baked into your product (or services) costs -- just like all of your competitors.

When you can step outside of mindlessly accepting that as a "fact of life", then you have an edge on your competitors.

I don't upgrade ANYTHING, anymore. There is nothing that I can't do that I don't already have the tools to do it. I air-gap my systems so I don't have to worry about malware. Hence, no parasitic loads on the system as it checks for infections/infestations, etc. Data LEAVES my systems, not ENTERS them. No RAID arrays that have to be pampered (just keep dupliate copies of everything).

Over the years, my colleagues (similar line of work) have come to adopt similar measures. I've never "pushed" the practice on them. But, when I get called at 2AM because someone's RAID controller shit the bed and now he can't access his data; or, when an AV program failed to intercept a virus and his system is now hosed; I mention that I never have these problems -- and why.

Because none of us are interested in babysitting hardware or software (any more so than we want to spend hours polishing screwdrivers and jack planes) but, rather, want to spend time doing INTERESTING things, they eventually notice the appeal of "zero overhead" development.

You're incompetent if you made an adoption plan without having the skills to do that.

Wow, so you will only do things that you already feel competent of doing? How limiting an existence that must be! Most businesses freely embrace other technologies AND THE PROFESSIONALS WITH THE CORRESPONDING SKILLSETS to grow their businesses.

Smart people don't buy used old hardware and run unsupported stuff putting their business at risk.

I'd suspect his net worth has a few more zeroes after it than yours! So, who's the smart one?

 

[Sam The Ripper]

A 300 million dollar company that manages to get along with just one IT guy! How many should it have? At what cost? How much MORE business will those extra staff (and updated kit) bring in??

Just the fact that you asking about the cost of an IT dep is telling everything.

A CTO reports to the CEO. Just because he recommends a particular course of action is no guarantee that the CEO will adopt it. Or, will fund it.

And this makes a difference between serious companies and the one you're talking about.

He had support -- from his IT guy. Security? If the enterprise network isn't exposed to the outside world, his only attack surface is exposed to staff. Linux+++++ sure won't protect against insider theft (of secrets, funds, etc.)

Ok, you don't work in IT. I can confirm this.
We can stop talking here about this argument, since it's completely pointless.

You make lots of assumptions about "business" likely based on just YOUR experience. Or, whatever the lemmings are proposing this week.

No, I'm talking about how the world works.
You're talking about penniless people who are trying to be Steve Jobs.

Wow, what arrogance. How big is YOUR company? I mean the one with "Sam" on the front of the store? Yet you want to poo-poo someone who has been VERY successful by defying the mantras you espouse. Threatened by his success? Afraid other firms will abandon the regular update mantra??

The people you're boasting are the people who call me to give them a solution for the mess they made themselves.

This is a non sequitir. Did you actually read what I wrote? What SPECIFICALLY is the "bad planning"? "Non existent necessity"? I described the factors that go into a BURDENED rate.

The answer to that sentece was related to the bad example you made before.

IT is only as large a part of their business as they make it or allow it to be.

I'm an engineer. My business is ENTIRELY technology driven. All of my tools (hardware and software) are examples of advanced technology. Yet I spend *zero* dollars on that technology. Because I determine the cost-benefit analysis of the technology I choose to employ.

You're an engineer and you don't even know how security works, since you just think that being under a local network is enough to protect yourself?
Please, man, stop lying.
I have enough of your bulls*its.

I spent $3K on AutoCAD in the late 80's -- because I was going to take on a project that could benefit from the use of 3D CAD Modeling. I spent $25K on an In-Circuit Emulator a few years later to design some particular hardware/software. Another $10K on yet another emulator a few years after that. $15K on an EPROM programmer. Tens of kilobucks on various EDA packages.

Each investment was made with the knowledge of how it would pay for itself. I've chosen not to upgrade ANY of them -- because they still provide the functionality they provided when I first purchased them. The only hazard is the OS that keeps wanting to be changed.

I designed a board for a client some years ago. Gave him everything to reproduce AND MAINTAIN my work. A "new hire" convinced him to upgrade the PCB layout package (a few kilobucks). Oops! Turns out the new version won't read the files from the old version! Surely not MY fault for failing to predict the future. OTOH, his new hire failed to DO HIS HOMEWORK about the EXISTING products that he would be supporting... because he was blinded by the sparkling lights!

Wow, are you going to tell us how long your penis is?
And yet, after all that experience you still don't know the difference between investment and wasting money. You don't even know how financially investments are calculated, since I told you the difference between CAPEX and OPEX for a company and you jumped that part, because you clearly didn't get it.
And yet I am the tech guy who don't understand the business.
Cool. Let us know when you'll came back from your own universe.

If you are spending money on upgrades simply because that' the "common belief", then all of your competitors are similarly burdened. Those costs get baked into your product (or services) costs -- just like all of your competitors.

You're right.
From now on, we're going to buy hardware on ebay and will hire you to manage them.
I'll tell this to my customers.

When you can step outside of mindlessly accepting that as a "fact of life", then you have an edge on your competitors.

Man, please stop talking about some motivational coach who is selling his fake courses on facebook.
You don't know how business works.

I don't upgrade ANYTHING, anymore. There is nothing that I can't do that I don't already have the tools to do it. I air-gap my systems so I don't have to worry about malware. Hence, no parasitic loads on the system as it checks for infections/infestations, etc. Data LEAVES my systems, not ENTERS them. No RAID arrays that have to be pampered (just keep dupliate copies of everything).

You're proud of not upgrading anything and you're talking about yourself as an engineer?
My god...

Over the years, my colleagues (similar line of work) have come to adopt similar measures. I've never "pushed" the practice on them. But, when I get called at 2AM because someone's RAID controller shit the bed and now he can't access his data; or, when an AV program failed to intercept a virus and his system is now hosed; I mention that I never have these problems -- and why.

You never had these problems because you never turned on a computer in your life.
"I never had a problem with the Altair - 'til I tried to use it!" said Steve Jobs in The Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Because none of us are interested in babysitting hardware or software (any more so than we want to spend hours polishing screwdrivers and jack planes) but, rather, want to spend time doing INTERESTING things, they eventually notice the appeal of "zero overhead" development.

If your interesting things are made with same care you have for your IT, I can't even imagine how half-assed they are.

Wow, so you will only do things that you already feel competent of doing? How limiting an existence that must be! Most businesses freely embrace other technologies AND THE PROFESSIONALS WITH THE CORRESPONDING SKILLSETS to grow their businesses.

When I'm not able to do something I pay a specialist to help me do that right.
You instead do it yourself, make a mess, and then blame the world because it's constantly changing and don't understand your fucked up concept of "real value".

I'd suspect his net worth has a few more zeroes after it than yours! So, who's the smart one?

Me, because I earn with the mess such people made everyday.

 

[Deleted member 81054]

Just the fact that you asking about the cost of an IT dep is telling everything.

You're the expert. You should have these figures at hand, right? How many IT professionals SHOULD he have hired to run his $300M business? How much should they have cost him? How often should he have been upgrading his hardware? At what cost?

Shouldn't he KNOW what your proposal is going to cost him? And, how much more YOUR PROPOSAL is going to increase his sales?

Isn't that what "doing your homework" entails?

You're proud of not upgrading anything and you're talking about yourself as an engineer?

Ah, I've obviously hit a sore spot as you are now resorting to passive aggressive insults. Sure I'm an engineer. Have the degrees and patents to prove it. When YOU can retire at 50, let me know.

When I'm not able to do something I pay a specialist to help me do that right.
You instead do it yourself, make a mess, and then blame the world because it's constantly changing and don't understand your fucked up concept of "real value".

I'm now convinced you have a genuine reading comprehension problem. Or, are just a troll. If you scan upthread, you will see that I mentioned an MRP system and the SCHOOLING that was required for everyone in the company. You then complained that: "You're incompetent if you made an adoption plan without having the skills to do that." NOW you are talking about hiring specialists.

You mean, like the folks who designed the technology you are adopting? Or, is everyone incompetent in your universe?

Would these folks count as "specialists"?

You've clearly bought the whole "got to keep current" sale wholeheartedly. So, you'll never get ahead of your competitors. Or, own your own profitable business. But, you can reassure yourself that you provide an essential service -- until people decide they don't really need it anymore!

Bye.

 

[Sam The Ripper]

You're the expert. You should have these figures at hand, right? How many IT professionals SHOULD he have hired to run his $300M business? How much should they have cost him? How often should he have been upgrading his hardware? At what cost?

Shouldn't he KNOW what your proposal is going to cost him? And, how much more YOUR PROPOSAL is going to increase his sales?

Isn't that what "doing your homework" entails?

Yes.
Service contracts. They are CAPEX and they cost less than creating technical debts by doing half-assed things like leaving mission critical systems unsupported and unpatched.

Ah, I've obviously hit a sore spot as you are now resorting to passive aggressive insults. Sure I'm an engineer. Have the degrees and patents to prove it. When YOU can retire at 50, let me know.
You clearly bought the whole "got to keep current" sale wholeheartedly. So, you'll never get ahead of your competitors. Or, own your own profitable business.

I quote myself:
“You instead do it yourself, make a mess, and then blame the world because it's constantly changing and don't understand your fucked up concept of "real value".”

QED.

I'm now convinced you have a genuine reading comprehension problem. Or, are just a troll. If you scan upthread, you will see that I mentioned an MRP system and the SCHOOLING that was required for everyone in the company. You then complained that: "You're incompetent if you made an adoption plan without having the skills to do that." NOW you are talking about hiring specialists.

Man, I'm seriously tired of your mirror climbing.
The point is: if you don't have the skills to make a proper adoption plan, PAY SOMEONE TO DO THAT FOR YOU, and stop doing it yourself badly just to blame later the technology.
The problem is YOU, and it's called PEBKAC.

Would these folks count as "specialists"?

Were they in charge of designing an adoption plan?
If so and they fucked up in the way you described, then YES they are incompetent.
Simply as that.

You've clearly bought the whole "got to keep current" sale wholeheartedly. So, you'll never get ahead of your competitors. Or, own your own profitable business. But, you can reassure yourself that you provide an essential service -- until people decide they don't really need it anymore!

Another motivational talk by someone who doesn't even understand TCO, CAPEX and OPEX.
You're just a scammer like those who made ads on facebook.

Bye.

 

[blackhole]

But bashing Linux by saying something not true is not a right approach.

I think you need to chill out and consider the "right approach" here. Continuing in this vein this will probably only get the thread locked...

 

[Ogis]

Chimera is a general-purpose Linux-based OS born from unhappiness with the status quo. It is simple, transparent, and easy to pick up, without having to give up practicality and a rich feature set.

It is built from scratch using novel tooling, approaches, and userland.

More info here.

 

[kent_dorfman766]

I was a slackware guy back when we rode around in horse drawn carriages, then I joined the industrial revolution with Fedora, but things moved way too fast in their release cycles, so in my old "change averse" years I switched to Debian. Once I got used to their packaging mechanism I never looked back. I do a text-mode server install, then manually add just the components I want. gnome-desktop or kde never touch my machines if I can help it.

My BSD use is more related to specialized or embedded systems I'm working on, and for nostalgia since my tooth cutting days were under DEC Ultrix. on their workstations in the early 90s.

 

[freezmi]

I've been using Gentoo Linux since 2000 and I still love it. I was also a developer for them for a few years in the SELinux team.

I managed to convert all the companies I worked at to it - once had 1300 instances of Gentoo at the same time at a VPN provider.

Pros:
- the package manager - a large number of USE flags that allow fully custom dependency trees for the entire OS. just define '-*' as a primary USE flag and then enable only what you know you use. great way to dodge exploit vectors in code you're not interested in.
- everything can be replaced including the init provider. so a system without systemd or even without dynamic devfs/udev is possible. I'm still rocking sysvinit from the depths of time with daemontools on top.

Cons:
- the package manager - it's written in python, which I detest with passion
- all python packages that end up clogging up the package update process due to unmet dependecies