> Anyone who chooses a fileserver which won't work reliably over one that > will -
Neither of you can predict the future. I don't know the specifics of this case, but Win2K (or even NT3SP3) is hardly an unreliable file serving platform*. And Penderel is hardly a testament to the reliability of Linux machines. when the one that will has already been paid for, and the one > that won't will cost the company about L2,000 extra - simply because the > unreliable one has a pretty login screen _is_ an idiot. I'm sorry; I doubt the pretty login screen counts for much, although possibly some. Seriously, what do you suppose this manager's reasons were for making his/her decision? Was it a simple case that he sees Microsoft as a predictable if unspectacular option versus Linux as a high risk option? Does he just think you recommended Linux only because you can't be bothered to learn how to administer NT properly? Does he have a friend who had real trouble setting Samba up for some reason and now he's wary of it? Was it that the decision over this file server was entirely trivial as far as he was concerned, and he just couldn't care less what gets used? Occasionally you do get incompetant people. But usually, people have good reasons for making decisions, even when they make the wrong decision. Until you understand why people decide to choose technically inferior products, it's hard to make your technically superior product more popular with them. I've met a lot of resistance to Perl based on 'bad past experiences'. We all know these were usually caused by bad programmers and stupid timescales. But your bad experience counts for a lot more than someone else's good experience, which is why the 'Perl success stories' are not alway so convincing. In the past I've had surprising advocacy success using Perl for some very simple task, that any language would have been fine for. Just showing that a bit of Perl can be in your system without causing a meltdown can do a lot to re-assure management. Despite Microsoft's infamous FUD tactics, negative campaigning is not very effective. If people have actually had bad experiences with technology X, then convincing them to use something else is hardly a challenge. Not much point telling them what they already know. If on the other hand they have had good, or even just 'ok' experiences, then it's hard to convince them not to believe their own eyes. It's much easier to convince them that, sure technology X is pretty good, but not _as_ good as technology Y!!. Compare: Geek - "NT?? Don't use that, it's crap, it crashes all the time, you're stuck buying MS products forever, I mean every _technical_ person knows how much it sucks!" Manager - "Err, well that little file server seems to have been OK for the last two years. Sometimes on Monday morning it seems to go really slow - I just reboot it and it's fine, no big deal. I don't think we've had to buy lots of software we didn't expect to. I know the anti virus software doesn't come from Microsoft and it seems to work OK. I dunno, might as well stick with it". With: Geek - "NT?? That's not bad for simple file serving and stuff. But probably one of the things you've found is that you're constantly updating the data files for that anti virus package? That's kind of a pain to do all the time, and Linux doesn't really have a problem with viruses in the same way. Another thing you've probably noticed is how it can be a pain to move lots of files around at once, like when you want to move all the old purchase orders to that archive folder in the Finance share? Well, on Linux there are much better tools for that, kind of like those batch files you've got but really much more sophisticated. Those can help organise stuff alot, so you don't get cluttered up with old versions of files everywhere." Manager - "That's pretty interesting, but it's going to be a pain to move all the old stuff over, right?" Geek - "Yeah, a bit but not too much. The key thing is that the users can't tell the difference - both NT and Linux with Samba look the same to Windows desktops, so you won't have to retrain any-one - won't even have to get people to update their shortcuts or anything!" > there's no way round that. Not always, but it depends how hard you try... Jon * At this point someone comes up with a story about how they once had this NT machine that crashed every day blah blah and all it was doing was printing one word document a month blah blah blah and then they put Linux on it and it never crashed ever blah blah blah. Since these stories are not reflected by _any_ of my experiences in the matter, I'm unpursuaded by them. -- Jonathan Peterson Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, +44 (0)20 7383 6092 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
