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Old 12-16-2013, 3:51 PM
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bruss01 bruss01 is offline
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Actually I do understand where you are coming from and I acknowledege that Unix/Linux has a lot going for it under the hood.

Where I work we use exclusively Windows PC's and that has been the case at every organization I have worked at since leaving Sears Corporate HQ (where they were married to IBM and used OS2). That was in the mid 90's. That said, we have a lot of Oracle databases and they all operate off a Unix platform. I don't know much about that side of things because ever since I started with SQL Server (v6.5) it has operated off a Windows Server platform. SQL shared a common code base with Sybase until the v6.0 split. Maybe they compiled Sybase to run on Unix/Linux?

Anyway, it's my observation that Windows dominates the corporate work world and I'll offer my opinion as to why that is.

It is the same reason that the AR-15 dominates the semi-auto rifle scene. Is it the best? Not really. There are other designs that are just as good. It has been tweaked and tuned and improved over the years and still there are a lot of other guns with vastly different design features which are arguably better in some ways (or in many ways depending on one's point of view). And yet it continues to dominate. Why? Again, because it capitalizes on a base of 50 years worth of ingrained user skills. Guys who picked one up for the first time at the age of 18 in 1963 who are now drawing social security. And their children. And now grandchildren... who have all grown up and in many cases grown old with the same manual of arms. That collective experience and the standardization of 50 years worth of refinement, tweaking, customization.

Frankly, I hate Microsoft in a lot of ways and I love the open source concept and believe it is the future. And it frustrates me that the "future" is taking longer than I hoped to get here! But one thing Microsoft does fairly well is support the users and try to make transitions as easy as possible. It's in this regard that I think they F'd up big time with Windows 8. They really "New Coke"d themselves on that one IMHO. Notice the quick back-pedal to patch it to provide a Win7 operator mode.

The question that a business operator asks when considering a transition to a new system is "how much down time am I going to have re-training each and every one of my employees to use the new system, and then how much productivity is going to be lost over the next year or two while we waste time figuring out how to do things that were second nature on the previous system?" If the answer to that question is "too much" then the new product gets sidelined in favor of the tried and true. As a result a lot of businesses find their tech becomming obsolete before the make/break equation becomes strong enough to warrant risking that kind of gouge to the bottom line. I see it all the time and my current employer is no exception.

Anyway, I am a great believer in *nix in principle... and I am hoping to get there eventually when I can afford the time away from earning a living every day and having a life on the side to be able to play with it enough to really get to know the ropes. Right now, when I am busy trying to earn a living and keep up on family and social obligations, it frankly seems like too much work for too little gain. Hoping that will eventually change. I will check on it again in a few years.
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