Linux in the office..

[Zerored]

Question. What is the most widely used linux flav used in most businesses and offices (excluding the BSDz)?

[Metgod]

I don't know but you *must* remember that Linux is *NOT* UNIX.
BSD (BSDi, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) are UNIX; NOT LINUX !!!
Unix is more developed because it's been around longer. I'd also say that *BSD
is more secure and powerful than Linux. I'm sure Uneek and madwill would agree.
:)

Anyways, enough preaching......

- Metty

[Cobra]

Here in Ireland, for client systems Mandrake is the most widely used. Just as it is so user friendly. And I have to admitt it is a good choice for any company to do that. For the arse end of the network I have also seen Mandrake used, also SuSe. Mail, WWW etc. tend to lean more towards BSD.

Now that is going on the work my company has done. Now the largest contract we have done is a 2,000 unit office block with close to 1,000 systems. Large companys you will find go more up market with there selections.

[Uneek]

Around here you'll find a TON of people use RedHat in an office environment, mostly for servers though. People are still pretty much Win-bound on the desktops. Most of the time though, if I'm going to use Linux I'll go with SuSE. I have a few SuSE boxes here at work and a dual boot workstation at home with SuSE on it. As Metty stated though, I do prefer BSD. Can't beat it for stability, other than VMS... hehe.

What I want to get my hands on though is a G4 lappy running OSX.  

[Cobra]

*farts on both Uneeks laptop and also at RedHat*
I have used every release of Redhat known to man, and i still HATE it. Never liked it, never will like it. REDHAT Certification??? REDHAT CERTIFA- Feckin - CATION!!??..
HAHAHA.. err.. HAHAH.. ermm.. AHAHA.. err.. <silent> I dont think so </silent>

As far as your laptop goes uneek.. *shudder* Thats all i got to say about that.

But.. On the plus side, Uneek does have alot still going for him, and thats his keen interest in BSD.

[CBK]

Any kind of Linux will be great!!!!!  I have to put up with the CRAP at work every day!  Today, I couldn't print, check my email, or make a back up of my StaffNCO's data cuz network problems, and miss configs.  It's like this every other day. one or more servers down.  I have bash scripts that ping exhange servers (3 of them) login servers and DNS?WINS Servers cuz fellow workers are always asking me whats going on with the network!! The ISC's (I'll be one for my shop here pertty soon) have been installing software upgrades and SP's on all of the Win NT/2000 systems the last few days every time they do this something gets @%cked up!  This afternoon the admin uninstalled office 2k just so they can apply the SP2 in order or some shit like that. NOW it's going down to the shop for a full install cuz' it SegFaulted and didn't come back on after reboot.  we tryed everything but a full install.  I wrote down the file I think is causing the problem but I can't find it now, maybe I'll post it tomarrow and someone can sherch for it and give me some kind of clue as to what it is.  (I think it is to be found in the Office2k dir)  So i'll be doing my work here at home on MY SYSTEM.  I could use *INUX on my desktop at work!!!!!!!!

Sorry I have to go back to work now....

[Metgod]

Okay CBK,

did you miss the point too ?
UNIX != Linux
I repeat UNIX is ***NOT*** Linux .... UNIX ***IS*** UNIX and Linux ***IS* Linux.
EOF


Why must people jump to Linux (bandwagon) ? ughh... Thankfully most the staff
here (myself included) prefer UNIX
*phew*

*begins chanting... UNIX UNIX UNIX UNIX UNIX !!!!@#$#^(%^%_(#... mwuahahah
we will unite and take over the world.... !!!!*

heheheh

[CBK]

Ok, but as i understand it, and untill i get my hands on a copy of BSD or something Linus made a open sorce ver. of UNIX.  I'm thinking now, if you mirror your open source OS after something it should be called by the same name.  Just different title?  I can't say that i have seen any differences cuz' I havent' used any "Unix" Please help and explain  

[Metgod]

Alright, I'll do my best to explain...

Back in 1969 is when the ArpaNET started. At this point everything (this is all
from memory and I will provide a link to an article I did at the end...) was
done in Asm. So UNIX was written in asm. So Richard Kerninghan (sp....)
and another guy whom I can't think of wrote C, and then rewrote UNIX in C.
So here we had this awesome OS and it lasts for many years and the Internet
gradually grew. But then comes Linus Torvalds in 1991 who wrote Linux.

Linux is not the same as UNIX, never has been and never will be.
Linux has a COMPLTELY DIFFERENT KERNEL, FEEL, LOOK, FILES, and to some degree --
SOME COMMANDS (i.e., snoop becomes tcpdump and different output) and
DIFFERENT OPTIONS. Sure, SunOS/Solaris does this with FreeBSD but it's not the
same...

Does that explain it ?
If not, tell me via the board and I'll try again...

[CBK]

Oh by the way that file that I think is causing my computer at work to lock up at boot is el90xnd4.sys  Any ideas??

[Uneek]

As far as why I want the G4 lappy is simply for OSX. Very fast, powerful, and quite nice! I wouldn't be caught dead on a regular Macintrash, but if it's running OSX... well, that's a different story... BSD Kernel baybeeee!!!

On the Linux thing... all I can say is that at least it isn't Windows. And actually I don't really mind it too much. Sure it's not BSD, but it's much more stable and powerful than Windows. I agree about RedHat. I don't really like that distro much. Although Mandrake itself is pretty much RedHat revamped with KDE...

[godaigo]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Linux enough like BSD and Unix that if you're familiar with one of
them, the learning curve is significantly cut when jumping to the others? And I agree, at least it isn't Winblows!

[wilnix]

No way in hell you going to convince me or anyone else that any linux kernel even comes close to *BSD. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSDi, and NetBSD all are alike in certain ways. Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, and anything with that kernel get no respect from me. And anything using LILO gets thrown in the trash. The only similarity between the two is the mount point. They dont use the same kernel, they dont have the same proggies for administration, and Linux will never be as stable as BSD. Many people will tell you the Mandrake "out-of-box" is very secure....Compared to what? Windows? Red Hat? Whatever.

You get the freebsd iso for 4.5 and install it. Then come back and tell me what YOU think...

Wilnix

[Uneek]

Actually, even the mount points aren't the same. With new versions of SuSE, all you really need is one mount point! That being /

I will however play devils advocate however and say that I bet I can make a SuSE box about as secure as a BSD box. It all comes down to administration in my opinion! And I'm not going to get into yet another "My OS is better than your OS!" arguements. (Especially since I myself believe BSD to be superior! hehe) But I've always said... use the tools that's going to get the job done! (Even if that tool is Windows!) I'm willing to bet that there isn't a single person on this board that doesn't use Windows, whether it's because they have to or need to... it's the same difference in my opinion...

Anyhoo, enough of my rant... My $0.025...

[wilnix]

I can agree to that. I myself would take a well bastanized windows box over an out-the-box *nix install. And I would also say that the security (no matter what os) comes down to the administrator. SImple rule: If you're not using it, shut it off.

How hard is that? Crazy, but that will fix most of the troubles most admins face these days with security...

Wilnix