[rescue] POSIX <> Unix <> Linux

[Jeremy Nielson]

> My shop (200 users +/-) is MS-only, because if something breaks, we want
to
> have one vendor to call. We are able to support 200 users in two countries
> and 4 sites with only 3 IT folks by leveraging a plain vanilla environment
> based on Citrix.
>
> We steer clear of Linux because it offers us almost no benefit, and witht
he
> learning curve as steep as it is (for a previously pure-MS shop), it is
very
> hard to justify. (the cost of the OS is one of the lowest expenses we have
> in IT - heck, even the refurb computers we buy come with nice shiny Win2K
> Pro licenses for well under $500...

Thanks for clearing up my misunderstandings :)

We run Linux on a cheesy little old machine here, so we can run our own
email server, and as a proxy (ipmasq, technically) server to allow 30 some
machines to access the internet through our dinky little dsl line.  It works
well, and much better than I see an MS-based product working on the same
hardware.  Who knew you could do so much with a junk amd-k6 300mhz HP (no
relation to current discussions).  It works nicely, and with 280 some days
of uptime, can't really complain too much... [yeah, yeah... i'm sure some of
the more wizened folk have quintupled that uptime].

I personally prefer FreeBSD, but since I put linux in place, I don't really
feel like breaking something that works.

Again, thanks for clarifying some of the issues above :)

Jeremy Nielson