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Get the Facts

Published by Robert Pogson September 9th, 2008 in Linux in Education. 11 Comments

A while back, M$ trumpeted the news that the London Stock Exchange was using Lose 2003. Here is the result. They crashed and were off the air for over 6 hours. Makes my little problems with a memory leak in a print server by M$ seem tame. I can predict my crashes and reboot… The LSE has a pool of IT talent and they took hours to get things running. Rebooting 100 servers does take time…

The fact is that if you rely on computers (Who does not these days?) you should not rely on M$ to provide the software. It is too complex, bloated and impossible to debug in a finite length of time.

I am system administrator of a tiny system with 7 servers. In four weeks we have had 2 system-wide failures to share files, three failures to print and several wierd incidents involving “profiles”. Instead of having the whole system run smoothly on one or two servers, it has evolved into a monster which no one can fix. I could replace all its functions in a weekend but users are afraid of change. Better the devil you know than a new OS… Instead of typing passwords a few times a day, I am typing ctrl-alt-delete and passwords all day long and all I can do is watch it fail. My latest estimate is 72 hours to failure. Should I reboot tonight or gather more data?

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.