It's the second point that I'm looking at as it tends to hamper take-up of Linux at the corporate and semi-corporate levels. There is a lack of properly trained administrators and it isn't going to get better. It isn't FUD, it's true and one doesn't need a survey to find out - just talk to people in the field.

Windows has been around long enough for a host of training institutions to offer courses in administration; if not the courses certified by Microsoft itself, there are umpteen ways of gaining some traction as a Windows admin. The fact that most of the work done by these admins consists of clicking on tools which have graphical user interfaces is an added reason which contributes to the GNU/Linux situation.

With GNU/Linux, there are some tools which provide the click-and-set interface. But the whole direction which a Linux admin takes is somewhat different to that which a Windows admin does. There are differences between distributions - in system initialisation to begin with and then minor differences between those. Slackware and its derivatives, for example, use the BSD system initialisation; Debian (and its derivatives) use the System V system initialisation while Red Hat (and its derivatives) use a modified System V style. (Since version 7.0, Slackware includes System V init compatibility.)

While some distributions include many graphical tools, a lot of Linux administration is done at the coalface by editing configuration files - it is faster and far more efficient. One cannot, therefore, pull an admin who has done some basic training and put him in a situation where he has to operate at this level - he or she needs a while to get used to these ways.

Further, GNU/Linux offers the administrator a much more powerful environment via a number of scripting languages; Windows has very poor support for this aspect of system administration.