Do you run Linux - if not why?

that wrote: »

As a person who works for a company who buys products from people like yourself, it causes issues.

We are a windows shop from desktop to server. So someone infrequently in the org buys a product, and if it is on a Linux platform 90% of the time the product supplier wont support the operating system, or blame the os. Would say that 9.9% do, and charge for it.... but eventually something goes wrong and they all do a runner, "we only sold you the application, which we support, not the os", "the product runs on linux, but we do not support linux, just the product" and "No, we do not have a windows version".

Another scenario is that they sell the company, the new company that takes over are very eager to collect maintenance support money, but when something goes wrong, they have no idea, the source code had vanished and they also do not support linux.

Then there is "thanks for the fish, but we can not longer support the bespoke database as we are retiring" (tough luck to the 25 years worth of collected data from our bespoke platform written from source in C).

I know linux is often free, great for developers, but for the end user side is more complex.

Holy thread resurrection.
I disagree with quite a lot of your points here. If a company refuses to support their product on an alternative OS because 'reasons', then they are a really !!!!!! company, in my opinion. I've been using Linux for a long time and I do have a far greater understanding of it than the average person, but that doesn't mean I have forfeited my right for software/hardware to work correctly, especially if I have paid for it. I do, however, know that when a hardware product is playing up, I can usually diagnose why and eventually come to a logical conclusion and potentially fix it. The more you use Linux, the more you grow in experience. I have no reason to use Windows and I can't be bothered with OS X/macOS.

Your thing about source code is also ridiculous. The source code has vanished where? Source code doesn't just vanish, it gets either lost or deleted, but a proper business should NEVER experience that. This is why we have offsite storage etc. If your company is losing source code than they need to look at themselves and their practices.

Stoke wrote: »

Holy thread resurrection.
I disagree with quite a lot of your points here. If a company refuses to support their product on an alternative OS because 'reasons', then they are a really !!!!!! company, in my opinion. I've been using Linux for a long time and I do have a far greater understanding of it than the average person, but that doesn't mean I have forfeited my right for software/hardware to work correctly, especially if I have paid for it. I do, however, know that when a hardware product is playing up, I can usually diagnose why and eventually come to a logical conclusion and potentially fix it. The more you use Linux, the more you grow in experience. I have no reason to use Windows and I can't be bothered with OS X/macOS.

Your thing about source code is also ridiculous. The source code has vanished where? Source code doesn't just vanish, it gets either lost or deleted, but a proper business should NEVER experience that. This is why we have offsite storage etc. If your company is losing source code than they need to look at themselves and their practices.

As someone at the end of the chain from what I am told from suppliers and owners, I'm calling it as I see it. The niche software is bought by some one in our org for their department. It is not our departments software or contract, we have no say, but often we are brought in either for racking a physical machine, or delivering a virtual one, but always when shtf we have the hot potato thrust upon us.

We have had a few companies that have been bought out, or sold, or the developer retired, or 'a new team in place and non of the members have ever worked on that project'. In many cases they can not find the source code, so I am told.

When a server runs out of space, rather than consolidate the database, it is easier for the supplier to ask for more space

A new version of linux patches comes out, they (the vast majority) are not willing to check it works with the latest patches either. In my decades there I can count on one hand the supplies that ever updated a linux box.

Yes, when a new product does come in, and we hear it is linux based, the whole team moans. We are all jaded.

Our oldest box is Solaris v2.2 and we have a good few on RH4.x. The windows boxes are in much better standing, and get regular patches.

Personally I'd love all my apps to work under linux, would move to it tomorrow.

AndyPix wrote: »

Linux is never going to become mainstream unless it starts to be bundled with consumer hardware.
Why would a 'normal' user uninstall windows to install Linux - It offers them absolutely no benefit

Obviously it's important to clear up any distinctions here: Linux is a broad brush name for software that uses the Linux kernel. If you want to loosely argue the success of Linux from a mainstream perspective, you only need to look at how many Android devices exist in the world.

What you are actually talking about, is Linux Desktop Distro's and the only one that got even close to mainstream was Ubuntu, but really, it's still light years away from actual mainstream adoption. Heck, I use Linux every day without fail and don't use Ubuntu.

Years ago, various manufacturers including Dell tried to ship their laptops with Ubuntu. At the time, I thought it was really good to see, but what actually happened was most users simply paid extra for Windows and those who didn't simply knew how to install pirate versions. Not many seem to offer it now..... in fact, some manufacturers offer FreeDos or Windows..... instead of Ubuntu or Windows. Sad really.

The only exception I can think of, is something like the old Acer Aspire's that were shipped with Linpus Lite. Which was/is an absolutely horrendous distro and no doubt will have turned potential new users off Linux for good.

motorguy wrote: »

Thats wholly it. If you listened to one or two of the hardened Linux fanbois on here in the month or so this thread has been running, as a Win10 user i should have experienced multiple occurrences of

• Massive windows updates being forced on me at inconvenient times
• System crashes
• My computer running slowly
• Antivirus processes strangling my CPU
• RAM usage spikes making my machine hang
• Massive start up times

To be honest i've not experienced one occurence of any of those. Just like in the month before that and the month before that, and...

As no doubt one of your 'Linux fanbois', I can categorically state that I have not even hinted that you experience those things.

However, of the two Windows versions, I do prefer Windows 7. It's all about opinions though and Windows 10 has been wildly more successful than Windows 8, which is fast becoming the forgotten child. Personally, I find Windows 10 too in your face. It tries to be all things to all men, without really excelling at anything in particular. In my opinion, Windows has never really excelled at anything except straight-up usability. Everything is made incredibly simple for the user (until things go wrong, then it becomes exponentially more difficult in my opinion).

I have many issues with Windows but one of the ways it achieves its usability factor is by essentially obfuscating low level configuration and customisation from the user. It's modus operandi is that "you on the left, should really be working on something near enough identical to you on the right". This is great for 95% of PC owners, hence why people go back for more. If you're using your laptop or PC for browsing, word documents, eBay, facebook etc, you'll be absolutely fine using Windows for the rest of your life. Gaming as well.....

The complications will arise when you become a non-standard user, such as owning a piece of bespoke hardware.... or owning a device that has patchy drivers. Good luck trying to get it to work consistently on Windows. That is where you'll find the reverse of the myth becomes true..... Windows is great with known hardware but can be utterly useless with unknown or unsupported hardware. A great example of this is literally any Virtual Serial Interface, whether it be cable, or whatever..... even the high quality FTDI 3v3 cables. Windows, going back years, has never had good serial support, all the way back when we actually used Serial connectors instead of USB-Serial interfaces. The original serial implementation was absolutely garbage on Windows. Even with good drivers and a decent brand USB cable, it becomes a bit of a lottery when you plug the cable in, as to whether it'll enumerate as expected or even correctly. I was doing some work recently and it required the use of TTY, so in Windows, there's no native support for this, so you download a tool called PuTTY. The whole experience was just garbage and very flakey. You might as well flip a coin to guess whether it'll work as expected or not.

I'm not trying to sound like a Linux fanboi here, but there are legitimate reasons why Linux is preferred by some to Windows and it's not because we hate Bill Gates or Capitalism or Microsoft or any of that crap.