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On 09-Sep-2001 at 17:47:22 Alex Charrett wrote: > It has however had quite a deluge of (in my opinion), a somewhat strange > attitude towards Microsoft and it's products. > Strange in what way? > Don't get me wrong I'm not a fan of their somewhat dubious buisness > practices but I can't help but feel that these regular references to > "Windoze", "M$" etc are somwhat unnecesary. > Do you mean those exact terms in particular or references to Microsoft generally? If generally, then I don't think its any different than those who don't like redhat, do like suse, don't like kde but prefer gnome, etc, etc. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If people want to voice their opinion about these things then that's up to them. If someone wants to slag off redhat and moan about it, then that's up to them - provided they make an argument about it rather than just uninformed criticism :-) As to 'M$', I should add that some time ago someone at the Uni asked about obtaining a copy of linux. No problem. Then then asked me how much the license would cost. I was sorely close to saying that that would not be a problem if they made the cheque out to me :-) They were 'pleasently surprised' as they say to find out that the only monetary cost was basically for the media (I had pointed them to the linux emporium for the cd's, as they wanted their own copy and didn't want to download it all over the net. I have no cd burner either, just in case anyone suggests that). The point is that Microsoft stuff costs a lot of money compared to linux. The question is whether it is worth the cost. A lot of people obviously don't think so. > To be honest, Windows systems have good and bad aspects, as does > everything else. I rather feel the key to the success of any system is > its ability to interoprate with other systems. > Very true that it has good and bad points. As people on this list are well aware the Uni runs Microsoft stuff on their open-access PC's for both staff and students. If it really crashed all the time, was too slow (network issues aside), didn't work or whatever, then the Uni would soon be losing students. As it is we're getting more and more students. Would linux be 'better', I suspect not but that's more the 'is linux a good desktop O/S' debate. I do belive however that it (linux) should be offered as a choice, similarly with Mac's (which used to be pretty common here, but I haven't seen one for a few years now). > It's long been a concern of mine that there can be a certain air of > strange superitority surrounding users of systems like Linux and *BSD. > Superiority? No not really, but I will admit to a certain amount of 'gloat' :-) However, again you must realise that when an NT server (for example) crashes it affects a lot of people here, likewise with 'code red', etc, etc. In the former case I just keep on working because I'm not using the NT servers. In the latter, this had no effect on my linux box. Damn annoying to some of the other staff that I can simply carry on whilst their work is held up :-) In terms of 'crashes', I can't remember the last time (if ever) my PC has 'crashed' as such. Likewise with the Sun servers I look after. In terms of virus attacks I can't say that they have ever been affected. Hence the overall picture is that Unix (and probably linux) servers are more 'resilient' to these problems (and security generally) - from the staff/student point of view - than MS ones. It's not really a valid argument, but the impression they get. A follow on from that would be that people will argue that Microsoft servers, software, whatever is not good. That's it, John. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914 E-mail: jhorne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx PGP key available from public key servers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.