I’m going to close the discussion because it seems to be the same thing over and over again and I think it gives me enough Linux FUD to write another article breaking your choice distributions “as is” against SBS by showing the screenshots and feature breakdowns. Yes I know “you can do it” mentality, but when proposing it to the small business “you can do it == expensive” and outright goes to prove my entire point about Linux pitches and their misleading nature.

-Vlad

Netfilter comes with essentially all distros. Squid is then the only thing you need (something that comes with a lot of distros). That doesn’t seem like a lot. It adds up to 1. Guess what. ISA also adds up to one. The difference, linux = secure; ISA/Windows = insecure.

I am not saying that setting up proper linux servers is not a lot of work. I do believe that only someone that knows what they are doing should set it up. This is another problem with windows. They make it so simple that so many kids and basic users can now setup a server. Companies then learn to depend on these servers which are very improperly setup.

I did also say that Exchange does have more features. I never argued that. But I do think it is not reliable enough to be used for a mission-critical service such as email.

“Laughed out of the office”. Why? Because I don’t want the features provided by WSUS? If you were in an office full of Linux admins, you would get laughed at for recommending a toy product (Windows). A product made for dummies.

Do you not understand what I meant by Debian proprietary terms? This means that for debian (a stability focused distro), they consider the packages unstable. There are many other well known and highly used distros that are using MySQL 5 and PHP5 without calling them unstable. Are they adventurists? No. They simply don’t follow the same very strict requirement of debian.

I use MySQL 5 and PHP5. I have had them running for very long time and never had them crash or require a reboot.

Whereas I have used Windows 2003. Considered stable by M$. And it has crash and required several reboots.

If you are so concerned about stability, how can you recommend M$ products. What debian calls unstable is still far more stable than windows/exchange/isa and so on. If M$ were so strict in what they called stable, exchange 5.5 would be the stable one.

I really don’t understand you. You are against using debian unstable, yet you use Windows and Exchange to get all the newest and greatest features. Where is the logic? It is totally backwards.

Dear anonymous coward, you are either an idiot or really trying hard to convince me of something I already know. Probably both based on your responses so far.

PHP5 and MySQL5 do not come with Debian, you quoted an unofficial repository.

The article, as I tried to point out a number of times, is to help SBS people compare against Linux. I switched my blog site to Linux which is a completely different situation. I needed a cheap web site, my business and corporate intranet still run Windows. Big difference there.

As for your breakdown of administration tasks, I believe it. You don’t strike me as a particularly competent person based on the list of your arguments.

Roy,

I am responding to every bit of dishonesty that Linux zealots that know nothing about Windows are spreading on my blog. If you come to my site you don’t just get to run your mouth, you have to back it up with facts. So far the only fact coming out of this thread is something I addressed in the post originally: There is a big difference between what people pitching Linux say and whats actually true. Most Linux users, specifically many of you arguing with me over WSUS, Exchange and IIS really show your lack of understanding of the Windows platform. I’m just making sure that the visitors here are aware that these comments are posted by clueless people and clear it up. Like that anonymous coward “somebody” up there.

-Vlad

The configuration is not overwritten, it is preserved. Microsoft supports and provides prescriptive guidance for upgrade paths from recent -> latest versions.

“Can you get MySQL 5.0 on Debian stable? No.”

“What about PHP5? No again. You have to go up too an experimental branch to run that code.”

Get a clue. http://www.dotdeb.org/
And I don’t use neither Debian stale or Debian based distro. A half minute job

Use Google: “debian stable” mysql5

Scalix community is free and has 25 Enterprise licenses (read Outlook licenses and shared calendar etc), pity about your experience with support blowing! I have only used the forums (which are regularly posted on by Scalix employees) and have always had quick and informative answers.

In your article, is seems to me you have done exactly what Microsoft did with their get the facts site? You have done nothing more than expound the righteousness of Windows over Linux, only from a different view point. It also seems to me, from the posts, that Linux has its own share of righteousness. I am not a system administrator, security administrator, or even a developer. I manage a data center for a government entity. I have a mixture of Windows, UNIX from different vendors, and Linux servers. What I do know is that because of security concerns, we dumped exchange and went to a Linux based mail system. We also went to Apache because it just was a better web server.

The last thing is that we don’t have to have all my administrators/operators spend time on Saturday rebooting all the UNIX or Linux servers like we do the Window boxes.

Small business (5 to 30 employees) does not have time or personnel to do admin functions for the server, for the email or the web server. They only have time to concentrate on their business.

If I am a small business why do I need to move to new versions (upgrade), with the exception of security patches? If everything, the system, my applications, my email and my web site are all functioning properly why would I want to change? Again, the focus of a small business is to concentrate on my business not my servers.

So from a business stand point it seems that from an overall operational prospective a Linux server provide a more cost effective solutions then the Windows server.

Roy

I have this discussion with customers quite often. I just recently revisited one of my SMB customers and their SBS server has been ticking away nicely for well over a year now. The business owner gets the SBS reports and contacts me for the occassional backup failure (tape not loaded, tape write-protected, that sort of thing). The users get a prompt once a month on their desktops to reboot for the latest patches thanks to WSUS. They pay me 1 hour per month to logon remotely and do a test restore to test the tape integrity, check logs, and apply any patches. A rock solid and reliable solution for this business.

Could they have saved money going with a free Linux distro? Sure, on the software. Would they have all the features they need, some of which are mentioned in the article? No.

Good article Vlad, very rational and well thought out. As a personal and professional user of many versions of Windows, Linux, and BSD I agree with everything you have written here.

A guy who runs Linux. He actualy has a soul to preach how linux is more expensive, while he runs it because it is cheaper.

What can you do? Some people are just simply hypocritical and without a basic sense of self respect

http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/opsys_aadechghcd_ae/

Oh, I’m sure you can download some plugins, tweak the config, modify this and that – and perhaps put together something remotely similar to ISA – but at what cost? Far more than ISA, that I’m sure of.

Your comments reflect the lack of understanding what WSUS does, how it does it and what the value and benefit is. Thus comparing that as you have so far would get you laughed out of the office of anybody that knew anything more about WSUS than you did. Likewise with Exchange. Which of the Linux solutions supports Windows Mobile push mail? Which one natively supports Blackberry devices? You have to constantly keep on syncing with a POP3 server…. well, you know the deal.

As for Debians proprietary terms, I suggest you read them:

“The experimental distribution is a special distribution. It is not a full distribution in the same sense as `stable’ and `unstable’ are. Instead, it is meant to be a temporary staging area for highly experimental software where there’s a good chance that the software could break your system, or software that’s just too unstable even for the unstable distribution (but there is a reason to package it nevertheless). Users who download and install packages from experimental are expected to have been duly warned. In short, all bets are off for the experimental distribution.”

“all bets are off” is not something I would ever consider as a recommendation that an IT professional should make. Linux or otherwise.

-Vlad