I started computing on a Commodore 64, then was turned on to PCs when the 8088 came out and Microsloth DOS v 3.2. Ran one of the largest dual node BBSs on a 286 running DOS/DesqView/PCBoard. Started in *NIX on an AT&T 3B2, then really started to see the light when moving to AIX on IBM RS/6000.
Was turned on to Linux before it even had hard disk support. It booted and ran off two floppies (I think it was around kernel version .91). This was before any distros. The first distro I used was called "SLS", then Slackware, then I tried RedHat 2.0. Kept switching back and forth between Slackware and RedHat until about RedHat 5.2 and have pretty much stuck with them since with the exception of a few Debian installations.
Spent the last 5 years in a mostly Sun/Solaris shop plus some HP-UX, Linux and FreeBSD. I can tell you that for the most part I like the Sun equipment (the larger enterprise servers) but I am not a great fan of Solaris. In fact we took a couple of old Sparc 20 machines and wiped out Slowaris and installed Debian and made web servers out of them.
I run several RedHat web/ftp/DNS/mail and network monitoring and IDS servers. Couple of FreeBSD web/DNS/mail servers. All of the above OSs have their strengths and weaknesses. Linux and FreeBSD I think are the best all around internet servers (keep all the packages updated, turn off all the unnecessary services and be security minded like for any OS).
Of course when it comes to Commercial software a lot of times Linux has been left out and you might have to go with Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, etc depending on the app.
The last two years have been great for Linux as software vendors started jumping on the bandwagon and ported their apps to Linux (Oracle, Sybase, some Adobe stuff, Some games, etc etc). Linux was never in my mind ready for "Joe Average User" as a desktop OS, at least until very recently. I've seen some great progress just in the last couple of months in this area. I just hope the vendors haven't given up on Linux as I feel they are starting to do. I also happen to have to administer many NT servers (they by far require more care and feeding than the *NIX machines because I think MS's server developers have desktop developer brains, they just don't get it, automation is 1000 times easier in *NIX).
I've always thought that if Microsoft were smart they would take that open source *NIX code and put their pretty shiny user freindly desktop on a real OS for a base and fire all of their OS developers. They might have some stability, they might have some security, they might have a viable server platform, and if they chuck that VB crap they might not be so prone to viru. Now it seems Apple has actually gone this route. I have to admit I've never touched an Apple but from everything I've read from you all that run OS 10 you give it a thumbs up. Maybe it's time to get a MAC to add to my collection. I'm not the biggest fan of their business strategies either though. But they are an underdog. MS is so shoved down peoples throats I think everyone else has a deep hole to try and dig out of no matter how great their stuff is, course this has been the story all along.
rm -rf
http://www.microsoft.com/[ December 05, 2001: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
