3 ms·

Windows is pretty inexpensive, and if you want something supported for more than a year or two, the options do tend to be somewhat costly. RedHat, for example,

Windows is pretty inexpensive, and if you want something supported for more than a year or two, the options do tend to be somewhat costly. RedHat, for example, is $50/year for the equivalent of Windows Update. There are also a number of other advantages for windows in terms of things like remote management which RedHat doesn't have equivalents for.

ageofwant 10y ago
Redhat has a vast array of remote management tools: Asible, puppet, cobbler, ssh etc. Most all of them are superior to Microsoft's offerings. It would make perfect sense to have a Linux host on machines if most applications are web based.
- tracker1 10y ago
  But then you have to maintain ansible/puppet etc scripts to keep things in order... and when one machine doesn't work right, you have to figure it all out, often searching through stack exchange sites/answers... let alone getting answers for other distros, or even other versions of your distro than no longer apply. That doesn't even consider hardware variations and compatibility issues with drivers.
  - yellowapple 10y ago
    You'd have to maintain Active Directory / Group Policy /etc. settings under Windows anyway. It ain't like Windows automagically sets you up with a perfect management solution for your organization. When one Windows machine doesn't work right, you're still often the one searching through Stack Exchange, Microsoft's support forums, etc. If you're going with something popular in the enterprise like RHEL or SUSE, you're pretty much on equal footing when it comes to support availability and troubleshooting (if not in a much better situation due to the easier time - IMO - in actually creating/maintaining/deploying system configurations). Driver issues are indeed significant, however. It's a lot better than it was when I first started using Linux, but printing and scanning is still a major pain point. Enterprise environments have a much easier time here than home users due to being able to constrain driver problems to a select few print/scan servers running CUPS/SANE instead of having to deal with this on a workstation-by-workstation basis, but it's still far from ideal, and very few businesses are truly "paperless".
    - massysett 10y ago
      These desktops are completely virtual; printing is through the virtual desktop to a network printer. They don't even let us hook USB flash drives to the client. So driver issues would be minimized here, which seemed to me to be all the more reason to go with Linux here.
idobai 10y ago
The windows support doesn't worth anything, usually the supporters can't help coworkers. Also, windows 7 is too unstable to use at work.

ageofwant 10y ago

Redhat has a vast array of remote management tools: Asible, puppet, cobbler, ssh etc. Most all of them are superior to Microsoft's offerings. It would make perfect sense to have a Linux host on machines if most applications are web based.

tracker1 10y ago
But then you have to maintain ansible/puppet etc scripts to keep things in order... and when one machine doesn't work right, you have to figure it all out, often searching through stack exchange sites/answers... let alone getting answers for other distros, or even other versions of your distro than no longer apply. That doesn't even consider hardware variations and compatibility issues with drivers.
- yellowapple 10y ago
  You'd have to maintain Active Directory / Group Policy /etc. settings under Windows anyway. It ain't like Windows automagically sets you up with a perfect management solution for your organization. When one Windows machine doesn't work right, you're still often the one searching through Stack Exchange, Microsoft's support forums, etc. If you're going with something popular in the enterprise like RHEL or SUSE, you're pretty much on equal footing when it comes to support availability and troubleshooting (if not in a much better situation due to the easier time - IMO - in actually creating/maintaining/deploying system configurations). Driver issues are indeed significant, however. It's a lot better than it was when I first started using Linux, but printing and scanning is still a major pain point. Enterprise environments have a much easier time here than home users due to being able to constrain driver problems to a select few print/scan servers running CUPS/SANE instead of having to deal with this on a workstation-by-workstation basis, but it's still far from ideal, and very few businesses are truly "paperless".
  - massysett 10y ago
    These desktops are completely virtual; printing is through the virtual desktop to a network printer. They don't even let us hook USB flash drives to the client. So driver issues would be minimized here, which seemed to me to be all the more reason to go with Linux here.

idobai 10y ago

The windows support doesn't worth anything, usually the supporters can't help coworkers. Also, windows 7 is too unstable to use at work.