4 ms·

I have been at a clients location with my Ubuntu 12.04 laptop today. The "IT guy" there and all the other (non IT) office staff asked me what this is and how t

by gitarr 14y ago

I have been at a clients location with my Ubuntu 12.04 laptop today. The "IT guy" there and all the other (non IT) office staff asked me what this is and how they could get it. I had to do a full 15 minutes of explanations about Ubuntu. You cannot imagine the looks after I told them it is free.

Florin_Andrei 14y ago
That would make sense in 1995.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Did you give them the whole "4 freedoms" talk? Seems surprising that the IT guy didn't know about it though, can't be many people in the IT world (even dyed in the wool Windows guys) that haven't heard of Ubuntu.
- ajdecon 14y ago
  Honestly, you'd be surprised. The IT world includes a lot of people who train up from help desk or similar positions, and spend their time very focused on the specific class of problems they're dealing with. Not surprised at all that someone described as the "IT Guy" might be a small company's only tech, trained up from a non-IT position and with no experience at all outside their tiny ecosystem.
  - noahc 14y ago
    This is pretty common. In many cases they are strictly the hands and eyes of the technician. I know a large company 300+ where their IT guy was there only to call someone who knew more. I'm also familiar with a situation at many smaller banks where their IT person is the youngest of the VPs. Of course they use external IT services and audits, but for day to day IT problems you go to the VP of whatever first.
    - niels_olson 14y ago
      I recently bought a computer from a computer reseller (great way to go, IMHO) who had never heard of Ubuntu. He had tried to install Red Hat once back in the day, but that was about it.
- gitarr 14y ago
  The IT guy has last looked at Ubuntu a couple years ago, he was surprised how far it had come. He is working a Windows domain at the job.
loboman 14y ago
Maybe the IT guy recognizes the name Linux, but not Ubuntu?
- gitarr 14y ago
  The IT guy has last looked at Ubuntu a couple years ago, he was surprised how far it had come. He is working a Windows domain at the job.
gouranga 14y ago
Firstly I will say, I like Microsoft. I'm sitting here on a Win7 laptop (dual boot Ubuntu) and have a Windows Phone next to me. But I don't like the culture that follows it around. I like Ubuntu and see it as a much more positive model and a more extensible, cheaper system. However we have some problems to contend with... Here's how it works where I work (SME - 100 people - UK - Financial sector): Show a user Ubuntu - "ooh that's really nice - feels better than windows". Show a dev/architect Ubuntu - "yeah we already use it at home for everything and we run a few VMs without letting operations know - want me to friend you on bitbucket?" User approaches operations for a test machine - "NO!" and a load of FUD about how Linux is cancer and Microsoft is Jesus' sandals and "I'll replace you with a very small powershell script (if I can get the signing right)". Dev/architect approaches operations for a test machine - "NO!" then silence with no attempt to get into a discussion. Any discussion raised ends up with the "we're a microsoft shop and that's not going to change". This is the same company which runs everything on ESX which is Linux underneath, has Linux-based virtual firewall and load balancer appliances, uses Linux-based Android phones, Unix-based iOS devices everywhere and ironically runs it's entire phone system on Linux. At the other extreme, we have to run memcached on windows otherwise ops will get all antsy. Clueless monocultural operations teams that want to protect their worth are who are causing serious problems. We need some marketing tied to "you dont need an ops team anymore" or "cheaper, more efficient ops teams are possible with Linux" (which they are) and you will get somewhere. This is the THIRD place I've seen this now so it's rife.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  When I started at one large Brazilian portal, our ops team served both the home page and the images off IIS boxes. Many people on the team knew how stupid it was and there were scripts running (on Linux, obviously) scanning the Windows boxes for malware (every day or so, somehow, an infected flash or a defaced weaponized HTML file appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The clueless idiot who managed the team kept on resurrecting benchmarks from the 90's on how Windows was better for serving static content. When it finally became obvious that all the problems were due to their technical choices, they botched two attempts to migrate the servers to Linux. They configured Apache in such a way it kept on allocating memory until the machines crashed every 25 hours or so. I won't attribute that to malice. They were really incompetent and misconfiguring a web server in this way required more brainpower than they had. We eventually fired him and most of his minions. They now work at a Microsoft partner.

by gitarr 14y ago

Florin_Andrei 14y ago

That would make sense in 1995.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Did you give them the whole "4 freedoms" talk? Seems surprising that the IT guy didn't know about it though, can't be many people in the IT world (even dyed in the wool Windows guys) that haven't heard of Ubuntu.

ajdecon 14y ago
Honestly, you'd be surprised. The IT world includes a lot of people who train up from help desk or similar positions, and spend their time very focused on the specific class of problems they're dealing with. Not surprised at all that someone described as the "IT Guy" might be a small company's only tech, trained up from a non-IT position and with no experience at all outside their tiny ecosystem.
- noahc 14y ago
  This is pretty common. In many cases they are strictly the hands and eyes of the technician. I know a large company 300+ where their IT guy was there only to call someone who knew more. I'm also familiar with a situation at many smaller banks where their IT person is the youngest of the VPs. Of course they use external IT services and audits, but for day to day IT problems you go to the VP of whatever first.
  - niels_olson 14y ago
    I recently bought a computer from a computer reseller (great way to go, IMHO) who had never heard of Ubuntu. He had tried to install Red Hat once back in the day, but that was about it.
gitarr 14y ago
The IT guy has last looked at Ubuntu a couple years ago, he was surprised how far it had come. He is working a Windows domain at the job.

loboman 14y ago

Maybe the IT guy recognizes the name Linux, but not Ubuntu?

gitarr 14y ago
The IT guy has last looked at Ubuntu a couple years ago, he was surprised how far it had come. He is working a Windows domain at the job.

gouranga 14y ago

Firstly I will say, I like Microsoft. I'm sitting here on a Win7 laptop (dual boot Ubuntu) and have a Windows Phone next to me. But I don't like the culture that follows it around. I like Ubuntu and see it as a much more positive model and a more extensible, cheaper system. However we have some problems to contend with... Here's how it works where I work (SME - 100 people - UK - Financial sector): Show a user Ubuntu - "ooh that's really nice - feels better than windows". Show a dev/architect Ubuntu - "yeah we already use it at home for everything and we run a few VMs without letting operations know - want me to friend you on bitbucket?" User approaches operations for a test machine - "NO!" and a load of FUD about how Linux is cancer and Microsoft is Jesus' sandals and "I'll replace you with a very small powershell script (if I can get the signing right)". Dev/architect approaches operations for a test machine - "NO!" then silence with no attempt to get into a discussion. Any discussion raised ends up with the "we're a microsoft shop and that's not going to change". This is the same company which runs everything on ESX which is Linux underneath, has Linux-based virtual firewall and load balancer appliances, uses Linux-based Android phones, Unix-based iOS devices everywhere and ironically runs it's entire phone system on Linux. At the other extreme, we have to run memcached on windows otherwise ops will get all antsy. Clueless monocultural operations teams that want to protect their worth are who are causing serious problems. We need some marketing tied to "you dont need an ops team anymore" or "cheaper, more efficient ops teams are possible with Linux" (which they are) and you will get somewhere. This is the THIRD place I've seen this now so it's rife.

rbanffy 14y ago
When I started at one large Brazilian portal, our ops team served both the home page and the images off IIS boxes. Many people on the team knew how stupid it was and there were scripts running (on Linux, obviously) scanning the Windows boxes for malware (every day or so, somehow, an infected flash or a defaced weaponized HTML file appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The clueless idiot who managed the team kept on resurrecting benchmarks from the 90's on how Windows was better for serving static content. When it finally became obvious that all the problems were due to their technical choices, they botched two attempts to migrate the servers to Linux. They configured Apache in such a way it kept on allocating memory until the machines crashed every 25 hours or so. I won't attribute that to malice. They were really incompetent and misconfiguring a web server in this way required more brainpower than they had. We eventually fired him and most of his minions. They now work at a Microsoft partner.