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Background: Unix (SCO and XENIX) and later Linux user and sysadmin (Slackware in '92), long-time Windows sysadmin for the "day job" (since NT 3.51). > I think

Background: Unix (SCO and XENIX) and later Linux user and sysadmin (Slackware in '92), long-time Windows sysadmin for the "day job" (since NT 3.51). > I think the worst part is the lack of incentive to actually learn about the OS, or how to use it, let alone holistic best practices for system administration. Funnily, this is how I feel about Linux-based OS's. Being that there's only a single "distribution" of Windows I can be confident that time I spend learning about various "contrivances" Microsoft devices (service management, configuration storage, etc) are going to apply to any Windows machine I work on. OTOH, every Unix and Linux distro has its own set of contrivances for configuration, service management (though systemd being rammed down everybody's throats has in some ways changed this), filesystem hierarchy, etc. I pushed for RHEL for "day job" deployments, for years, because I knew there would be stability in the product that was similar to Windows. (Debian is a close second.) Otherwise, Linux distros feel like the wild west. Knowledge about the underlying architecture of NT going all the way back to the original 3.1 release still applies. The OS has been updated, for sure, but there's a strong lineage and adherence to design principles going all the way back to the start. People who use any technology w/o understanding it are infuriating. > Both are often driven by incessant manual tweaking, until one day it finally works... Again, that's how I see a lot of Linux shops. I don't think Windows makes it any easier to have immature sysadmin practices. My Windows environments are deployed from unattended installs, configured by Group Policy, and manual tweaking on individual VMs is highly discouraged. If I were deploying Linux at scale I'd be using configuration management tools there the same way.

jahsome 3y ago
I think your perspective is totally correct, thank you for sharing it and checking my vitriol. The only thing I would challenge is that the pain of inconsistency (from distros to stacks, e.g. systemd, etc.) is exactly what I believe drives people to desire/aspire to automation and strive for the consistency. That inconsistency, while absolutely frustrating at times, also forces users (often against their will) to understand the core concepts behind the software they're using or managing rather than memorizing GUI workflows. In my opinion, a number of Windows folks seem to take consistency for granted, and become all too reliant on it. They get comfy and have little clue how to overcome adversity when it rears it's ugly head. I don't think that sort of laziness is unique to the Windows world, but I do think Windows makes it easier to fail upwards. It's much harder to hide incompetence in a Linux environment, at least in my experience. In other words: if you'll excuse my reductiveness, what doesn't kill, gives strength. Or at least hardens one's resolve. Honestly my biggest gripe boils down to how easy RDP makes it to form bad habits, and how there is little (short term) consequence for operating in reactive ways which lack reproducibility because "I'll just pop into the server and click around for a sec" Windows with RDP is faster, and it is easier. System admin that way (mostly) works. Best of all, for the majority of those who grew up in the PC age, it's familiar. But I unfortunately don't trust a lot of my colleagues past and present not to abuse it.
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  > It's much harder to hide incompetence in a Linux environment, at least in my experience. curl | bash enters the chat. Seriously, though, junior sysadmins (or devs pretending to be sysadmins) are gonna do what they do regardless of the underlying substrate. For Windows sysadmins it might be clicking-around doing one-off "fixes". For Linux admins it's shitting-up production boxes with compilers and dev tools or adding sketchy untrustworthy package repos. > Honestly my biggest gripe boils down to how easy RDP makes it to form bad habits, and how there is little (short term) consequence for operating in reactive ways which lack reproducibility because "I'll just pop into the server and click around for a sec" > Windows with RDP is faster, and it is easier. System admin that way (mostly) works. Best of all, for the majority of those who grew up in the PC age, it's familiar. It's the same w/ SSH on Linux machines, though. Junior people think it's easier to make one-off changes. Senior people realize that every one-off change is a gamble with the future. It's part of the culture and maturity of the individual and of the organization they're working in.
  - jahsome 3y ago
    If an org has sysadmin(s) what are devs doing in production? I'm not referring to juniors or devs, although shit obviously rolls down hill. My point is that whatever is done over SSH is at the very least repeatable with relative ease even if it's incorrect. SSH has a command history. RDP means recalling what guis were clicked through and which options were selected. Neither is particularly scalable and both are imperfect but only one of those is faulty by default. In the case of ssh at least I can copy and paste (then fix) some idiot's commands into a script as a starting point for automation. What are my options after a whackamole RDP session?
    - steve1977 3y ago
      If you edit a file via SSH, all you’ll see in the shell history is that you edited that file. You don’t see what got changed. But you’re certainly right that doing ad-hoc fixes is a losing battle, regardless of the platform.
  - 3y ago

jahsome 3y ago

I think your perspective is totally correct, thank you for sharing it and checking my vitriol. The only thing I would challenge is that the pain of inconsistency (from distros to stacks, e.g. systemd, etc.) is exactly what I believe drives people to desire/aspire to automation and strive for the consistency. That inconsistency, while absolutely frustrating at times, also forces users (often against their will) to understand the core concepts behind the software they're using or managing rather than memorizing GUI workflows. In my opinion, a number of Windows folks seem to take consistency for granted, and become all too reliant on it. They get comfy and have little clue how to overcome adversity when it rears it's ugly head. I don't think that sort of laziness is unique to the Windows world, but I do think Windows makes it easier to fail upwards. It's much harder to hide incompetence in a Linux environment, at least in my experience. In other words: if you'll excuse my reductiveness, what doesn't kill, gives strength. Or at least hardens one's resolve. Honestly my biggest gripe boils down to how easy RDP makes it to form bad habits, and how there is little (short term) consequence for operating in reactive ways which lack reproducibility because "I'll just pop into the server and click around for a sec" Windows with RDP is faster, and it is easier. System admin that way (mostly) works. Best of all, for the majority of those who grew up in the PC age, it's familiar. But I unfortunately don't trust a lot of my colleagues past and present not to abuse it.

EvanAnderson 3y ago
> It's much harder to hide incompetence in a Linux environment, at least in my experience. curl | bash enters the chat. Seriously, though, junior sysadmins (or devs pretending to be sysadmins) are gonna do what they do regardless of the underlying substrate. For Windows sysadmins it might be clicking-around doing one-off "fixes". For Linux admins it's shitting-up production boxes with compilers and dev tools or adding sketchy untrustworthy package repos. > Honestly my biggest gripe boils down to how easy RDP makes it to form bad habits, and how there is little (short term) consequence for operating in reactive ways which lack reproducibility because "I'll just pop into the server and click around for a sec" > Windows with RDP is faster, and it is easier. System admin that way (mostly) works. Best of all, for the majority of those who grew up in the PC age, it's familiar. It's the same w/ SSH on Linux machines, though. Junior people think it's easier to make one-off changes. Senior people realize that every one-off change is a gamble with the future. It's part of the culture and maturity of the individual and of the organization they're working in.
- jahsome 3y ago
  If an org has sysadmin(s) what are devs doing in production? I'm not referring to juniors or devs, although shit obviously rolls down hill. My point is that whatever is done over SSH is at the very least repeatable with relative ease even if it's incorrect. SSH has a command history. RDP means recalling what guis were clicked through and which options were selected. Neither is particularly scalable and both are imperfect but only one of those is faulty by default. In the case of ssh at least I can copy and paste (then fix) some idiot's commands into a script as a starting point for automation. What are my options after a whackamole RDP session?
  - steve1977 3y ago
    If you edit a file via SSH, all you’ll see in the shell history is that you edited that file. You don’t see what got changed. But you’re certainly right that doing ad-hoc fixes is a losing battle, regardless of the platform.
- 3y ago