Has Microsoft ever listened to anyone?

[Paul Johnson]

Well it's happened. Mark Shuttleworth, the multi-millionaire from South
Africa (yeh the space tourist guy - http://www.firstafricaninspace.com/ )
is offering a free and VERY user-friendly operating system to compete with
Windoze. Visit the site and download it and try it out. You'll be amazed!

http://www.ubuntu.com

I tend to point people to Debian instead. What Debian's stable lacks in
modernity (current stable hit around the same time as XP SP2) it gains in
package selection and ease of maintainability: Windows Update wasn't even
imagined before Debian's apt started the whole "Let's have our installer
fetch what it needs from the Internet" craze, and Debian Stable has
something like 30000 packages available for automatic installation for
free.

 

[Paul Johnson]

I know a lot of businesses that run on that junk 24/7/52 weeks a year
and never have any problems.

Almost correct.

s/never have problems/are so used to the problems that they're blind to them
now/

That's better...

 

[Paul Johnson]

Trim your quotes please.
http://ursine.ca/Top_Posting

Linux, IBM Warp OS, Unix, etc....

IBM's OS/2 Warp hasn't been around for a while. IBM stopped developing both
that and AIX to focus on their Linux customers.

 

[Leythos]

really, hook me up with that business -- guess they don't need an IT dept,
don't need DBAs, don't need developers

Many businesses that use Windows platforms for solutions don't need or
have DBA's or Developers. Think of all the companies, under 500
employees, with a couple servers and workstations that use Managed
applications that never hear the nic DBA....

I know a lot of shipping facilities that use Windows based networks to
control their shipping and process control systems and they have few
issues.

As with any OS, it's all on the designers shoulders - knowing what to
install, what hardware to use, what really is needed instead of just
installing any crap the users want.

 

[Leythos]

Almost correct.

s/never have problems/are so used to the problems that they're blind to them
now/

That's better...

Actually, that's 100% false in the case of our clients. With the
exception of a custom application written for the business (one client)
they don't seem to have any issues for months at a time - in fact, the
last issue was a computer making noise - turns out the fan in the PSU
was going bad, after 1.4 years of 24/7 use, and having only been
rebooted for updates (done at night, during lunch break on the midnight
shift).

The servers run all the time, in fact, they've got a SBS 2003 Premium
server that hasn't been rebooted in more than a year, and still runs
pre-sp1 setup, behind a firewall, and is very stable.