[ale] Chinese government recommendation - Linux

[JLightner at dsservices.com (Lightner, Jeff)]

Uh no.

My point was that it is the end users that are the problem.   Saying ?a desktop is a desktop? is all well and good but the reason most organizations delayed upgrading from XP to Windows 7 was because even changes in Windows desktops are painful to roll out to end users.  Telling them they have to go from Windows to Linux (and change many of the underlying tools such as the office suite) would be even more painful.  Not because it is technically difficult but because people are resistant to change AND because many people don?t really ?understand? what is happening when they do something.

My discussion of Admins was because we (UNIX/Linux admins at least) are more likely to embrace change if for no other reason than it is ?cool? to learn new things.   Having said that however, I have met a fair number of admins that didn?t want to be bothered with learning the Solaris or HP-UX way if they started on AIX or vice-versa.   In Windows admin land MS has been weaning them off of GUIs for a while now and I?ve talked to both the kind of MS Admin that rails against this and the type that realizes how much more power they have with command line tools.    In some shops the MS Admins are the ones who end up working on the first Linux systems.

That doesn?t mean you can?t have your preferences (I loved HP-UX) but you do need to learn the differences.   For me it has all been fairly easy because I started on DOS went to Novell then to UNIX and Xenix and finally Linux so I?ve seen the progression.    The key is getting the basic tools/concepts and transferring your knowledge to the new platform then building on that with the esoteric behaviors unique to each.   I was first introduced to command line in DOS and to ?users? and ?groups? in Novell.  Both of those experiences lent themselves very well to learning UNIX where essentially I just had to make myself a cheat sheet of the different command names for the same functions.  (type = cat, dir = ls, copy = cp, rename = mv etc?).

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kinney
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 10:30 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Chinese government recommendation - Linux

Hmm. Interesting point. Admins.