Comments on: I switched from Linux to Windows Server 2008

By: handa fanda

handa fanda — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:55:04 +0000

yes, linux is pain in the bun, i like windows server but, having hard time installing and using perl packges

By: bio

bio — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:55:59 +0000

The key question that I get all the time is why do use the command line. If you are an end user, then sure a GUI will be fine but if you are going to be an Admin?? I administer both windows and linux servers. I use the command line not the gui for the following reasons.

1. POWER OF THE SHELL….gui tools are extremely limiting. If a gui tool does 10 things, those are the only ten things that you can do. If their is a shell, I can do at least 100 and thats before I combine all the different options that are available.

2. What happens when you hit enter……you need to know that nothing is “automagic”. Without knowing what files and what directives in those files are affected how can you possibly be a good admin. What happens when you need to troubleshoot? Go get a gui tool that trouble shoots for you?
I have been an admin for 15 years and I have yet to see one that does this well. Why, because it would take a mighty amount of code to account for the multitude of problems that could possibly arise. So you need something that allows complete granularity…you need a shell, why do you think I have Powershell on windows now.

These comments are directed towards Administrators NOT end users or help desk. And in all honesty, how in the world can you be an IT professional and be upset at the aspect of having the read to learn something new that could help you..unbelievable. BTW…there are gui tools for both windows as well as redhat linux.

By: Brodey Dover

Brodey Dover — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:07:28 +0000

PC-BSD my good friend. You can install Gnome and it takes less time to get up and running.

Firstly, you should NEVER guess the syntax as that means you haven’t understood the man page well enough (linux man pages are hideous compared to *BSD man pages – they can be wrong and not inform you about important key facts).

I would rather run Windows than run Linux . Firstly, I will give my best shot at implementing FreeBSD/PCBSD.

My first attempt at arch linux gave the worlds oddest errors whenever setting up the hard disk partitions, I got a kernel panic (even windows doesn’t really crash the kernel) when restarting samba services, and the man page for pacman left out key information on getting myself going.

My knowledge of FreeBSD came in handy for sure. FreeBSD and OSX are my top choices, but the server products coming out of redmond are actually worthy enough for me to run them on my everyday desktops as a second boot option.

Thanks for the article

By: coco

coco — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:48:44 +0000

So to sum it up:
Windows Server without its cost will be cool
Linux without its hassles will be awesome
Combine the two you’d get the perfect system.
Isn’t it a nice dream?

By: Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:52:50 +0000

sorry, a correction in my comment above ” use GUI for its prons” not cons, got the two words switched lol.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:49:30 +0000

Linux, most of them distributions, the major ones, are great, rich security features, run fast and smoothly, and text-based managent has its advantages…. BUT….still there are alot of problems with linux, for example, a new NIC has no driver for linux and not recognized by linux,another example is that linux excessively relies on text-based managment,text-based managment provide a powerfull control but it not perfect, for example it lacks the ease of status monitoring viewing like you would get via GUI. To totally rely on text-based or GUI is lost cause, you have got to have a good mixture between the two, because each has its prons and cons, use the GUI for its cons, and compensate its cons with a test-based managent backup, linux doesnt have that, it so excessively relies on text-based.
Another problem about linux is the misconception that “Enterprise” means it have to be complicated and hard to get it on and up, Wrong!, why do i have to write a custom made batch file, and then run it via a terminal just to run an excutable file? why not just double click? doest really makes u feel smarter and worth something in the IT world if you did it that way(linux way i mean)? i just dont get it. Not even linux relies on text-based for most of its administrative functions, even the scripts, commands, the namings scheme of these commands and to use them is complex, why does it have to be this hard?, okay i agree when have a running and working linux server it will be perfect and smooth and you wont need much to maintain it, but you will go to hell back and forth many times before you get your server to that level.
Another example of i wouldn’t use linux and it will sound silly to you i know but i have tried fedora before and it had the hellix player(Real player match in windows OS), and i have tried to play some songs with .rm extension but no luck, i mean come on, Real tech made the hellix player, but it cant run the songs in their audio format(.rm .rmv etc ..)? that was a while ago i think fedora 8, probably got fixed by now.

I know what i wrote was random but it was just reading my mind and writing down what i didnt like about linux without really focusing on how it will sound.

By: Rave

Rave — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:12:17 +0000

I originally used windows but couldnt stand all the viruses xp had so i switched to linux and bsd. i been using linux for 3 years and it sucks. Linux is a piece of sh*t. The applications such as flash and java barely work half the time especially on kde. Certain printer drivers dont work. And webcams are a pain in the ass to set up on linux. I’ve used Fedora, OpenSuse, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS (bunch of a**holes those people in the community were).. I’ve used freebsd (a nightmare to setup) OpenBSD (even worse a nightmare) and DesktopBSD (nothing compatable hardware wise) and PCBSD (best of the bsd’s and easiest to use). But BSD still doesnt have flash support of its own. They have to incorporate flash9 through wine and embed it in the kernel through some wrapper. Trying to get most computer experts in my state or any state near me to work on a linux machine is almost impossible. I’ve had sound issues i’ve even caught the LKM Trojan on my mandriva and thats when i drew the line and said F*ck Linux and BSD and i switched back to Windows. Granted it has viruses but at least they have better firewalls and antivirus software to cope with that. When i was working with Linux and BSD i had to set up the firewall, the iptables, the ipv6tables, the ipchains, the rkhunter, the chkrootkit, the clamav, pax, aide, tripwire, and getting snort to work was almost impossible. SELinux was built half-as*ed and so was AppArmor. The firewalls (such as firestarter and guarddog) had to be configured and they werent nearly as advanced as norton or zonealarm for windows. And the intruision detection system was damn near impossible to set up and it was all terminal crap with mostly log files. It was a b*tch to work with. Modifying IPTables either through the terminal or through kwrite was a damn nightmare especially trying to make it work correctly. Symantec had been working with this stuff alot longer and do a much better job at it. KDE was a friggin nightmare. That desktop had more bugs and issues than explorer ever had. It’s far from stable. Konqueror constantly crashes java and flash are far from compatable for it. And good luck setting up a movie player in linux or bsd (with the exception of pcbsd or mandriva) setting one up had to be done through a third party and was a nightmare experience. You had to download the cvs grab all the updated codecs grab the actual file and download god only knows what dependencies are required to make the thing work… such as ffmpeg or gstreamer and many many others. Un-tar-ing the package make make install and check install. And you had to make sure you had perl and php installed on your system and a C++ and GCC compiler before you can do any of that crap. With windows its all point and click and go and its done for you. No hassle of setting up the most basic software or applications. None of that bullsh*t garbage to deal with like linux. Which is why i went back to Windows and havent regretted the experience one bit. No more headaches with linux and bsd. Granted windows may cost a bit more but in the end its well worth the extra money to know you wont bust your as* for hours doing something trivial to get it to work right. The problem with linux and bsd is its still designed for developers and hard core coders and not for the average guy who needs it as a desktop enviorment and perform basic functions like windows does. And yes BSD and Linux can catch viruses like windows can and once you get a virus its much much harder to get off your system than it would be with windows.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:24:26 +0000

I’ve used every version of Windows since 3.1. I’ve been generally impressed with the way things improved until about Win2k. From there, every OS that they have released has been worse than the one before it, in terms of usability and unnecessary complexity.

I just installed Windows Server 2008 as an alternative to my Vista installation. I hate it only slightly less than Vista at the moment. Nothing except the hard drives installed automatically.

The UAC permissions paradigm is still mind-numbingly poor — the Unix SUDO command is still vastly superior and less intrusive while being more effective at minimizing exposure to malicious software. All UAC does is teach users to ignore it. A ridiculous number of false positives is at least as bad as having no security. Unless, of course, you don’t *want* your server to run anything but the OS (but then, why have a GUI?).

The worst part is Internet Explorer. It automatically places any web site in the Untrusted security zone and requires you to manually add any that you might trust with an annoyingly intrusive pop-up message. Here’s a hint: a browser should not be so ingrained in an operating system that a bad website can compromise your server! My first installed application on this system is Firefox. It’s not perfect, but at least IE won’t be warning me whenever I want to do something useful.

And speaking of terminal vs. GUI, I’ll take the terminal. It may take longer to learn initially, but it’s much more powerful and faster to use. I can’t stand having to click 17 times through illogical (but improving) menus to change the minimum password length. Thank you, Windows, for showing that GUIs can be both pretty and more difficult to use than the console.

And don’t get me started on scalable GUI feature resolution in Windows. It still sucks (and always has) and isn’t even close to Mac or Ubuntu’s usability.

Back to Ubuntu for me. I’m only keeping Server 2008 on my system to play games.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:50:43 +0000

Yep, been along that same road and I sympathize your choice of server.

There’s a lot of bashing going on from terminal advocates towards those that prefer a GUI, but when things get though – oh boy – does it make a difference.

The transition was made in our (500 people) company after we experienced a severe setbacks with our FreeBSD server. Using text-based documentation and a terminal does make you get a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes … if you have the time. Having a delegation of investors and your manager (Murphy’s law) breathing down your neck when things go bonkers is not a time when the terminal proves to be more productive. You have an entire workflow which has to pass through the keyboard. A GUI simply gives you a clear overview, textfiles means pen and paper.

Win Server 2008 has reduced our workload. Sure, things happen but it’s sorted much quicker and the learning curve is steeper. We kept a part of the FreeBSD server to train new people (smaller internal network with FPGA cluster) and we’re seeing less “stress” when they get behind the windows server.

Embrace change, don’t try to stop it.

By: Oozzy

Oozzy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:16:38 +0000

“I never understood what is it some Linux fans find so bad about using GUI interfaces.”

They don’t have GUI and thats why they hate it They hate hardware vendors too. And the game vendors

I’m running 2 Linux servers myself and i really like Linux for some server roles. But I’m getting fed with all the Linux fanboy idiots called themselves “admins”… sigh.

On the topic: Windows 2008 is really amazing peace of software. I must admin – good job by M$.