RE: why linux?

| -----Original Message-----
| [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Mark Phippard

<snip parts that show how difficult it is to base views on aspects of ANY
OS, based on small sampling of different individual's experience>

| I do not have the skills/experience to pinpoint the problem so I just live
| with it.  I have tried different techniques such as using pserver vs.
| extssh.  Both cause the same problem, although lately it has been pretty
| stable.
|
| I am sure the problem is solvable if I had the skills to solve it, and no
| one is saying that a business should run on Linux without being sure that
| the IT people have the adequate skills.  So I am not indicting Linux.

Mark, there is no NEED for you to indict Linux because Linux INDICTS ITSELF
in this regard.

Most all would certainly agree that "no one <WOULD say> that a business
should run on <ANY OS> without being sure that the IT people have the
adequate skills".  The central TCO question becomes which OS allows the IT
people to develop the "adequate" skills the easiest and cheapest, which is
the strength of both Windows (thru youngsters being "raised" on Windows and
TechNet) and Linux (thru college-mandated coursework and the OSS community)
over OS/400.

But even more, which is easiest to use in the FIRST place by DESIGN (which
would be the strength of OS/400 over both of them and z/OS), to where the
definition of "adequate skills" is MUCH more reasonable.

Turning the process of developing, maintaining and running apps into "rocket
science" which requires NOT only a post-graduate degree, but many years of
experience (and a few incantations to boot...;-) USED to provide job
security for the initiated few (QUITE a few of us, at that).  That's an
economy that still lives on, largely being funded by the past excesses of
the dot-com era and current excesses of higher education (which has gone up
about 8-fold in the 30 years since I attended).  And it's possible it will
continue on forever, I s'pose.

But when a person of YOUR obvious expertise needs some good luck in order to
get this kind-a app running on Linux, I just shake my head and wonder.