>OS: Windows NT or Linux?<
For those of us old enough to be working in the 80's, Unix was taking the
world by storm! Open source (except the good stuff which you had to pay for
anyway), non-proprietary (as long as you didn't want to do anything useful),
binary compatible (although we never managed to successfully port from one
version to another without a reasonable amount of rewrite), vendor
independent (as long as your OS vendor was prepared to support every
peripheral ever made).
Linux IS Unix with a fancy front end (we had those in the 80's as well). At
the end of the day, you can have the best OS in the world but if there isn't
the application support, only the dedicated techos will stick with it (take
a look at BeOS which is far better than Linux but you can't do anything with
it). It will NEVER make its mark on the desktop (just try getting a CD-ROM
or scanner you bought from Dick Smith's to work on your Linux PC), but it
will have a place in the server market although you will have to employ
specialist Linux people to administer it which will put a lot of small
businesses off. The Linux vendors out there are falling into the same trap
as Unix vendors did, every vendor had their own flavour and enhancements.
NT got where it is today because there is only one standard, Microsoft's,
like it or not. It works (most of the time <g>) and has the application
support. They have addressed the reliability issues in Win2000 and stopped
trying to support software companies/developers who write crap software.
Whatever happens to Microsoft, NT will survive and we'll have to keep
writing software for it. Learning Unix may be worthwhile in the short term,
but be prepared to learn another flavour of it in 10 years time. The
industry has a funny way of going around in circles.
Laurence Bevan
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