Ok, so this isn't on my laptop, you got me. Where I work, it is a predominantly Microsoft environment--Windows is the OS, sharepoint is the wiki and doc center, Active Directory, all that. I've mentioned before that my job function deals mostly with writing software, along with troubleshooting and debugging said software (mixed in with hardware setup for automation, and miscellaneous other things).
All of the programs that I currently write are targeted to Windows OS, we'd like to change this and migrate our labs to using Linux, but that's a slow road. Not only that, but today I heard through the grapevine that one of the main IT persons wants to phase out all hardware Linux installs. Now, to me this just seems foolish. Firstly, Linux is free (in the form of CentOS, for RHEL licensing/support applies). Secondly, I'm sure a lot of the computer problems would be non-existent in a primary-Linux environment.
This all comes up becuase until recently I had been running a 64-bit Windows machine that I compile 32 bit and 64 bit on. Since I'm a Linux/GNU enthusiast though, I thought it would be nice to run Linux. So I got with the *nix guy and got the go ahead. Installed CentOS 6 on my desktop (after using Clonezilla to make a backup image first, of course), and went at it. Now, I can do 90% of all of my job related functions in Linux, but I still need some Windows environment to compile in. So I figured, hey a VM should be easy.
No such luck. Well it would be easy, but going through proper channels isn't easy. IT says it costs more to run Linux because of things like this (they want to use VMware instead of virtualbox/xen/kvm, which costs about $200 per). And then they don't want to support it.
I don't want support! I just want to slap this VM on my comp and use it as needed, with as little interference from IT as possible. bah, it's frustrating.
Even more frustrating is they push sharepoint for everything. I wanted to setup a bugzilla and git repo....they said "use sharepoint."
...yeah, that doesn't sound too great. So we setup a server on a little box we had, and have been runing it that way.
Things seem kind of backwards, but I guess in a large corporation it is easier to blame Microsoft (or someone else that you pay) when things go wrong. That's the only reason I can really think of, except for catering to the lowest common denominator.
bah.
Cyber Killer
originally posted: Thu 13 Oct 2011 at 08:57
There is only 1 reason to such stance from the sysadmin guys. They need consistency across all the environment. When everybody uses the same software it's easier to maintain it, and to support it. For them it probably doesn't matter which platform would be in use as long as everybody in the company uses it.
Now, somebody (probably not even the guys that maintain it now) made z decision when the company was young to go all-windoze ;-P. Probably somebody from the accounting and/or other VIP who had an "insipiring encounter" with some marketing staff from m$ or their sellers. The company has grown, and here you have it.
When 1 workstation is different and the person who uses it manages to keep it ok then it's no problem, but what if more ppl want different setups - there is no way to keep everything in order. The company is in a vendor lock-in, changing to some other platform is posible, but will require a lot of work. And nobody likes a lot of work.
The decisions made when a company is young and probably does not have any sysadmin who might tell the VIPs what is better for the future are the problem. N00bs choose and everybody suffers, cause it is a hell of a lot of work to maintan a network of windowses ;-P.
2012-01-10 9:23 pm