Don’t confuse bad Linux support for bad Linux

David M Williams
Wednesday, 02 July 2008 12:52

Opinion and Analysis

I’d be willing to wager most all readers feel Glidepath’s pain. I don’t know what the support costs were, and I could not guess, but I grieve when I read about their unreliable file system. I can feel the pain of users hoarding their files locally and an internal IT team collectively groaning at the important data being distributed all about due to a lack of confidence in the file server. I am horrified by a Samba system which isn’t co-operating with Active Directory.

All the problems outlined in the case study are mortifying. And yet, I am confident there are a great many iTWire readers now looking at this screen thinking how they would have loved to delve in and fix the terrible mess. I know that I, myself, would have loved to roll my sleeves up and pitch in if somebody expressed to me such a woeful predicament.

I am equally certain, though, our best efforts – even if welcomed by Glidepath – would have gone nowhere. The root cause of the problem was not that Linux or Samba were used. Indeed, the root cause doesn’t even seem to be that Linux and Samba were configured incorrectly – and of course they were, let’s make no mistake about that. Who has ever heard of rock-solid Linux being beaten out by Microsoft Windows and its fabled blue screen of death (BSOD)? It’s almost unthinkable. For a Linux file server to be crashing and unreliable reeks of a dismal implementation.

And this is the crux. The case study is clear that despite all these technical problems which make me weep; it was the support costs that struck a deeper chord. The support agreement with the sole integrator who provided this mishmash was working against the company. The integrator had lock-in and charged hard and, it seems, could not even fix the mess they made themself.

Now, the case study goes on to say that the new super Windows environment that fixed the mess was recommended by a technology partner with whom the IT Manager had a long relationship. I could make a cheap easy shot about the depth of the decision-making processes that resulted in Linux being ousted by Windows but that’s not relevant. The fact is, they had a bad setup and a bad support partner.

This is a serious claim and, I have to be honest, I think it hits.

No matter what you think about Microsoft Windows as a product, you likely can find reasonable support without much effort. By contrast, Linux support is less structured, less easy to find and with only very few certification programs it’s also very hard to independently assess the capabilities of any given service provider.

What can I say to all this? One appeal I must make is not to judge Linux by the bad experiences with any given service provider.

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